WV Gov. Tomblin Proposes 25-Year Tax Break for Cracker Plant
West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin has sent proposed new legislation to lawmakers asking for a 25-year break from business property taxes for any company investing at least $2 billion to build an ethane cracker plant in the state. There is a bidding war going on among West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania to attract the plant, a facility that processes ethane from shale gas drilling into ethylene, a raw material used to make plastics.
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Competition to attract an ethane cracker plant is heating up. West Virginia has made no bones that they intend to be the winners of the investment that will be made to build an ethane cracker plant to be built by Shell. The plant will cost upward of $2 billion and will create thousands of jobs to build the plant, operate the plant, and just as importantly, in the industries that will locate near the plant once it’s operational. It’s an economic jackpot worth $5 billion or more, and those who are in the game to attract it are in it to win.
A new Marcellus drilling law (highlights of the law listed below) passed in a special session of the West Virginia legislature and has been signed by Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin into law. Yesterday, the WV House of Delegates voted 92-5 and the Senate voted 33-0 to pass the measure, known as the “Horizontal Well Act,” which was immediately signed by the governor.
In a surprise move, two West Virginians have announced their intention to build an ethane cracker plant in the state. Former state Supreme Court Justice Richard Neely and Ryan Cunningham, owner of Charleston-based Cunningham Energy have formed a partnership with a few others and will try to get the necessary permits and financing to build an ethane cracker plant on a 1,500-acre plot near Montgomery, WV.