First Look At The Ethane Cracker Site

Scott Detrow

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Scott Detrow is a congressional correspondent for NPR. He also co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast.

Detrow joined NPR in 2015 to cover the presidential election. He focused on the Republican side of the 2016 race, spending time on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, and also reported on the election's technology and data angles.

Detrow worked as a statehouse reporter for member stations WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KQED in San Francisco, California. He has also covered energy policy for NPR's StateImpact project, where his reports on Pennsylvania's hydraulic fracturing boom won a DuPont-Columbia and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2013.

March 15, 2012 | 2:11 PM

The Beaver County zinc smelter that will host Shell's ethane cracker

Here’s a bit more on today’s major story – Shell’s decision to build a multi-billion dollar ethane cracker in Beaver County.
The Monaca, Beaver County site currently hosts a zinc smelter:

Conveniently positioned with access to road, rail and river transportation, Horsehead’s Monaca plant operates as the country’s largest zinc smelter. Located 28 miles north of Pittsburgh, this electrothermic zinc smelter is the result of a company experiment conducted in the 1920’s to produce zinc oxide. Since that time, the Beaver County operation has been expanded and modernized. Recognized as the world’s largest user of recycled zinc-bearing materials in its manufacturing process, Horsehead’s Monaca location produces primarily zinc metal and zinc oxide.

That’s taken from the Horsehead Corporation’s website.