Sources: Shell's Ethane Cracker Will Be Built In Pennsylvania

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 | 12:14 PM

Shell is going to build its multi-billion dollar ethane cracker in Pennsylvania, according to sources within the natural gas industry and Pennsylvania political circles.
Ethane crackers convert natural gas into ethylene, which is used in plastics products. The large-scale facility is still years away from reality, but will likely generate thousands of jobs.
The announcement will come later this afternoon.
According to sources within the gas industry, Ohio Governor John Kasich and West Virginia Governor Earl Ray Tomblin were both told earlier this week that their states did not win the three-way bidding war.
Both Kasich and Tomblin made aggressive, high-profile plays for the Shell plant, traveling to Houston to make their pitch to the company. West Virginia even passed a law creating a 25-year tax break specifically aimed at the facility.
The Corbett Administration took a much more low-key approach, revealing scant public details about Pennsylvania’s bid for the facility. Act 13, signed into law last month, did direct five percent of impact fee revenue toward “infrastructure projects related to the natural gas industry.” Another new act expanded “Keystone Opportunity Zone” tax breaks to create fifteen years’ worth of breaks for companies that invest at least $1 billion in new Pennsylvania-based projects.
We’ll have more details after the announcement.