Shell Tax Break Now A Key Cog In Budget Talks

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 19, 2012 | 12:59 PM

Pipeline has a good report on how important the Shell tax break has become to state budget negotiations.
Be sure to check StateImpact Pennsylvania tomorrow for a look at how the $1.65 billion tax break is playing in the Beaver County community where the ethane cracker may be built.
Here’s the PG’s report:

Following Monday’s closed-door meeting in the governor’s office, Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi, R-Delaware, described the tax credit proposal — which could allocate up to $1.65 billion across 25 years for companies, including Shell, that locate ethane-processing facilities here or the downstream companies that use the ethylene produced at those facilities — as the governor’s “number-one priority” and an “essential” part of the budget process.
“We understand that that’s an important part of what the governor sees as the budget package,” Pileggi told reporters. “It’s something that we haven’t caucused on in the form of a specific bill yet, but it’s become crystal clear to me, and I think for all of us, that that’s something the governor feels is an essential part for him.”

Asked moments later about Pileggi’s remark regarding the emphasis being placed on ethane tax credit, Gov. Tom Corbett replied: “That’s a fairly accurate description.”