The Other Energy Bills Corbett Signed This Week

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.

February 15, 2012 | 1:15 PM

Scott Detrow / StateImpact Pennsylvania

Governor Corbett, at the Elizabethtown Fair

Lost in the uproar over the new natural gas drilling impact fee: two other energy-related bills Governor Corbett signed into law this week.
The AP takes a look at the measures:

Among the other bills that Corbett signed privately was one that would allow public utilities to charge ratepayers up front for improvements to power lines and water, sewer and natural gas pipelines, and another that could deliver long-term tax breaks to a buyer of three Philadelphia-area oil refineries that are shutting down and a massive petrochemical refinery that may be built in southwestern Pennsylvania.
The latter bill is a centerpiece of Pennsylvania’s competitive pitch in a race against Ohio and West Virginia to persuade a subsidiary of Netherlands-based oil and gas giant Royal Dutch Shell PLC to build a petrochemical refinery in the Pittsburgh area, potentially meaning thousands of new jobs and millions of tax dollars for the state.