AP: Taxpayers foot bill for natural gas industry subsidies

• Marie Cusick
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  Marie Cusick was the Harrisburg reporter for StateImpact Pennsylvania.

The Associated Press looks at the various ways Gov. Corbett and state lawmakers are looking to subsidize Pennsylvania’s natural gas industry– from incentives for natural gas vehicles, to pipeline expansions, and Shell’s proposed ethane cracker in Beaver County.
From the AP:

With the assent of lawmakers, Corbett, a Republican who says the industry has the potential to reindustrialize Pennsylvania, has tapped four pots of money for more than $30 million for natural gas projects.
That includes money for a processing project by plastics maker Braskem S.A. of Brazil, pipeline construction to link facilities of French drug maker Sanofi SA, scores of compressed natural gas vehicles and about a dozen fueling stations. About one-fifth of that money is drawn from a $200 million-a-year drilling fee on the industry.
On top of that, lawmakers last year approved what could become the state’s biggest taxpayer-paid economic development incentive ever—possibly in excess of $1 billion over 25 years—to entice the construction of a multibillion-dollar petrochemical refinery to convert natural gas liquids into ethylene for the plastics and chemicals industries. Netherlands-based oil and gas giant Royal Dutch Shell PLC is considering it.
Patrick Henderson, a deputy chief of staff for Corbett who spearheads the administration’s energy policy, couldn’t say how much money the administration ultimately would be willing to spend to encourage natural gas use.

As StateImpact Pennsylvania has previously reported, compressed natural gas (CNG) vehicles have been slow to catch on. Statewide, there are only about two dozen public CNG fueling stations.
The outgoing CEO of Shell has also been publicly questioning the company’s big bet on U.S. shale.

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