Is Ohio Still Wooing Shell? Governor's Office Won't Say

Last week we told you that despite Governor Corbett’s warnings, West Virginia says it is not trying to re-enter the Shell ethane cracker bidding war. A spokesman for Governor Earl Ray Tomblin’s office told the Charleston Daily Mail that they had “not had any fur­ther dis­cus­sions with Shell about their cracker loca­tion since the announce­ment that they had optioned prop­erty in Penn­syl­va­nia.”
Ohio is playing it a bit more coy. Here’s what Laura Jones, a spokeswoman for Ohio Governor John Kasich’s office, told StateImpact Pennsylvania via email: “Our policy is not to discuss details of individual projects, active or otherwise. What I can tell you is that we are aggressively marketing sites in Ohio to the chemical and petrochemical processing and fractionation companies. The state of Ohio is well located for those opportunities and we have much to offer those sectors.”
The Corbett Administration is warning another state could swoop in and steal the Shell plant from Pennsylvania, if legislators don’t pass a $1.65 billion tax break.
But as the Tribune-Review reported this weekend, administration claims that a petrochemical plant would produce 20,000 permanent jobs are not grounded in detailed studies. 

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