Ethane Cracker Deal Lifts Spending Cap

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.

June 29, 2012 | 11:05 AM

The AP has a bit more more information on changes to the tax credit on ethane purchases Governor Corbett is pushing for, as he tries to convince Shell to build an ethane cracker in Beaver County.
The most important development is that legislators are lifting the annual $66 million cap on the break, which means the benefits could exceed the $1.65 billion price tag that has been tied to the credit since it was first announced.

At $1.7 billion, lawmakers say it would be Pennsylvania’s largest financial incentive package ever, but the value of the tax credit could actually exceed $66 million a year, or $1.7 billion total.
“At some point in time, it could be” above that, said Sen. Elder Vogel, R-Lawrence, whose district could become home to the new industry. “It won’t be to start with.”
The $66 million limit was an artificial number, Vogel said. But the nickel per gallon figure is more important, because Corbett administration officials say it would be proportional to the industry’s activity and the resulting collections of new taxes on things like sales and income.