Proposals to build two ethane cracker plants – one in Wood County, West Virginia, and another in Belmont County, Ohio – have fizzled.
A petrochemical manufacturing hub predicted six years ago in the mid-Ohio Valley didn’t materialize.
Proposals to build two ethane cracker plants – one in Wood County, West Virginia, and another in Belmont County, Ohio – have fizzled.
Cracker plants produce the building blocks of plastic products. In 2017, the chemical industry and the Trump administration predicted that the Ohio Valley, with its proximity to shale gas reserves, would become a hub for that process.
According to the report, competition from China and a build-out of petrochemical manufacturing on the Gulf Coast discouraged investment in the Ohio Valley hub.
Daelim Chemical USA, a major investment partner in a proposed ethane cracker plant in Belmont County, Ohio, across the river from Moundsville, West Virginia, announced on Tuesday that it is exiting the project.
In a joint statement with PTTGC America LLC, the Thailand-based company driving the project in the Ohio Valley, an executive said that despite Daelim’s withdrawal, the project remains a “top priority.”
“We are in the process of seeking a new partner whilst working toward a final investment decision,” the head of PTTGC America, Toasaporn Boonyapipat, said. “We look forward to making an announcement by the end of this year or early next year on this transformative project for the Ohio Valley Region. We wish Daelim well and appreciate its contributions to our effort.”
The proposed Belmont County cracker plant has been in the works for a few years and has faced a growing backlash from some in the local community who fear the project could fuel a new petrochemical industry that could be harmful for the climate and health and safety of residents.
In 2018, Daelim announced it was partnering with PTTGC America on the project. The companies purchased 500 acres of land along the Ohio River in Dilles Bottom, where a coal-fired power plant once operated.
If constructed, the plant would take ethane — a product of natural gas — and produce up to 1.5 metric tons annually of ethylene, a feedstock used in plastics and chemical manufacturing. The plant’s air permit estimates the cracker would produce the equivalent carbon dioxide emissions of putting about 365,000 cars on the road.
According to PTTGC America, the project would invest $47.5 million over 15 years in education and other community needs while also generating more than $20 million in sales tax revenue during construction.
In their statement, both companies cited the economic uncertainty tied to the COVID-19 pandemic, including oil price volatility, as reasons for rethinking the investment in the Ohio Valley.
A recent report by the Trump administration found expanding the Ohio Valley’s petrochemical industry could be an unprecedented source of economic opportunity and growth when the county, and region, eventually emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, recent analyses by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, a think tank whose mission is to accelerate the transition to a diverse and sustainable energy economy, found changing market conditions, exacerbated further by the coronavirus pandemic, call into question the economic viability of petrochemical investments in the Ohio Valley, including Shell’s Monaca cracker plant, currently under construction near Pittsburgh in Beaver County, Pennsylvania.
Environmental groups have reached a settlement agreement with a petrochemical company in Ohio to beef up air pollution controls at a proposed petrochemical plant along the Ohio River.
Thailand-based PTT Global Chemical America and South Korea-based Daelim Industrial Co. have proposed building a multi-billion dollar ethylene cracker plant on a 500-acre tract of land in Belmont County, Ohio, just a few miles from Moundsville, West Virginia.
The plant would crack apart ethane — which is produced during natural gas fracking — into smaller molecules used in plastics and chemical manufacturing. The plant would produce an estimated 1.5 million tons of ethylene annually.
An air permit issued by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency last December allowed the plant to emit 400 tons of volatile organic compounds and produce the equivalent carbon dioxide emissions of putting about 365,000 cars on the road annually.
The settlement signed Monday requires the company to use technology to find pollution leaks and repair them. The company would also install a weather station on site and create a website available to the public with emissions data.
In a statement, environmental groups praised the improvements, but remained opposed to the plant, which would be the second such facility in the region. About 30 miles northwest of Pittsburgh, Shell Chemical’s Monaca cracker plant is under construction. It’s slated to produce 1.6 million tons of ethylene each year and permanently employ about 600 workers when done, according to the company.
“This agreement will help protect local communities from dangerous air pollution should this facility be built, and we’ll continue to fight to ensure that it never comes to that,” said Sierra Club Organizer Cheryl Johncox.
Federal Support
A final investment decision by the project developer has not been made. Proponents envision the Ohio Valley as the next hub for plastics and petrochemical production, which they argue could drive investment and jobs to the region.
The Marcellus and Utica shale formations located in the Ohio Valley contain high levels of natural gas liquids, or NGL, which can be separated from their cousin methane to become valuable feed stocks for plastic and chemical production. A2017 U.S. Department of Energy report found U.S. NGL production in the region is projected to increase over 700 percent in the 10 years from 2013 to 2023.
“Federal efforts are strong and continue to gain momentum,” Steven Winberg, DOE’s assistant secretary for fossil energy, told the Joint Committee on Natural Gas Development. “We also recognize that others are doing a lot and we believe that together we can make this Appalachian petrochemical renaissance happen for the benefit of the industry, the region and the country.”
In addition to concerns over air pollution, those opposed to a petrochemical buildout in the region point to climate concerns. Areport released earlier this year by a coalition of environmental groups estimates production and incineration of plastics in 2019 will add more than 850 million metric tons of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, or equal to the pollution of building 189 new coal-fired power plants.
The report projected by 2050, emissions from the entire plastics life cycle could account for as much as 14 percent of the earth’s entire remaining carbon budget.
An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated how many environmental groups were part of the challenge. It is three, not four.
President Donald Trump Tuesday toured Shell Chemical’s soon-to-be completed ethane cracker complex in Monaca, Pennsylvania, to tout his administration’s commitment to expanding energy production. The facility is part of what industry boosters hope will be a new plastics and chemical manufacturing base in the upper Ohio Valley, but many residents here worry about the heat-trapping gases and plastic waste such an industry would produce.
Speaking to a crowd of a few thousand construction workers, Trump said investment in plastics and other petrochemical plants in the Ohio Valley could greatly benefit the region. He touted the vast reserves of natural gas and natural gas liquids contained in the Marcellus Shale, which extends throughout much of the Appalachian basin.
“This is an incredible region; you’re sitting on top of something special,” Trump said in a wide-ranging, and at times rambling, speech. “It’s all fueled by the greatest treasure on the planet, American energy, and we don’t want people taking that away from us.”
The Shell facility, located about 30 miles northwest of Pittsburgh, will use extremely high temperatures to convert natural gas liquids, including ethane, from the Marcellus Shale into smaller molecules used in plastics and chemical manufacturing.
Once completed, the facility will include an ethylene cracker and polyethylene production complex slated to produce 1.6 million tons of ethylene each year and permanently employ about 600 workers, according to the company.
Credit Alexandra Kanik / Ohio Valley ReSource
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Ohio Valley ReSource
In his speech, Trump noted additional investments are being made in Ohio to build out the region’s petrochemical industry.
“This is just the beginning,” Trump said. “My administration is clearing the way for other massive multi-billion dollar investments.”
Outside of the Shell facility protestors boycotted the president’s visit.
Environmental and public health groups argue cracker plants are huge pollution emitters that threaten the climate, environment, and the health of residents living in the region. Investment into plastics manufacturing in the Ohio Valley comes at a time when some municipalities and countries are banning single-use plastics due to environmental concerns.
“The scheme for a petrochemical hub in the Ohio Valley is yesterday’s answer to today’s problems, and it ignores tomorrow’s crises,” Mary Wildfire, a West Virginia resident and volunteer with the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, said in a press release. “It ignores the rapidly increasing problem of plastic waste choking our oceans and infiltrating our bodies—and the rapidly increasing movement away from plastic. And it ignores the steady movement toward cleaner, sustainable energy sources like wind and solar.”
Shell’s Beaver County facility is permitted to release up to 2.25 million tons of greenhouse gas pollution annually, or the equivalent of the emissions from nearly 480,000 cars.
That figure will rise substantially over the next few decades as the demand for single-use plastic continues to grow, the report finds. By 2050, emissions from the entire plastics life cycle could account for as much as 14 percent of the earth’s entire remaining carbon budget.
“Federal efforts are strong and continue to gain momentum,” Steven Winberg, DOE’s assistant secretary for fossil energy, told the Joint Committee on Natural Gas Development. “We also recognize that others are doing a lot and we believe that together we can make this Appalachian petrochemical renaissance happen for the benefit of the industry, the region and the country.”
Winberg urged West Virginia lawmakers to invest in preparing sites for possible cracker development, characterizing them as “anchor facilities.”
The region’s third cracker plant, proposed for Parkersburg, West Virginia, may be in doubt. Michael Graney, executive director of the West Virginia Development Office, told lawmakers developer Braskem has pulled out of the project.
Another key component to attracting plastics and petrochemical manufacturing to the Ohio Valley is creating storage for natural gas liquids. Officials in the region have been working on the so-called Appalachian Storage and Trading Hub for nearly a decade.
The Hub cleared its first major hurdle last year when it got approval for the first of two phases for a $1.9 billion U.S. Department of Energy loan.
Earlier this year, a coalition of more than 100 advocacy groups led by Food & Water Watch sent a letter to the chair of the House Appropriations Committee challenging whether it’s legal for DOE to grant a federal loan guarantee to the fossil-fuel-based project.
In June, an amendment to an appropriations bill passed that would clarify that DOE could only grant loans for “clean energy projects.” The measure has not been taken up by the U.S. Senate.
If someone had a crystal ball, they could tell you exactly what the future holds for Weirton. Sadly, there are no magic tools to make this a short story. But, with a bit of help from the gift of gab, I’ll tell you about the current trajectory of the area.
As it’s already been established, Weirton Steel offered a seemingly unbreakable backbone of employment, high wages, and community identity to the city and the nearby stretch of the Ohio Valley. The mill helped Weirton in countless ways, from building hospitals and libraries to plowing the streets and hanging lights during Christmas time. Harold Miller, the mayor of Weirton, emphasized just how integral the mill was to maintaining the city.
“It was a wonderful company to work for. I mean, it’s just, it was unbelievable, it was a fairytale. It was a one horse town, you know, and it just, so many businesses thrived off of Weirton Steel. We built a new hospital because of Weirton Steel,” he said.
Another part of the steel backbone was the tax base the company provided to Weirton. However, the company’s fiscal agreement with the city was much different than most businesses. Weirton Steel had an “in lieu of agreement” with the city in which, rather than being taxed on operations, they paid the city a lump sum of money at the end of the year. The mayor explained this would balance the city’s budget.
“So if the city in those days had a $12 million budget, $15 million budget, and they were short $2 million, then Weirton Steel would write a check for $2 million so they could balance their budget and continue to operate the facilities,” Miller said.
After Weirton Steel’s bankruptcy, the city placed more responsibility on the citizens to support the city’s budget. This came in the form of a 2004 municipal service fee of $2 a week for anyone working within city limits. In 2016, the city council passed a one percent sales tax to stack on top of West Virginia’s six percent sales tax. Still, these measures have failed to replace the financial hole left by Weirton Steel. There are people, though, who are trying to fill this gap.
One such person is Patrick Ford, the executive director of the Business Development Corporation of the Northern Panhandle, or BDC. Rather than focusing on one county, his organization uses a regional approach to help revitalize the valley’s economy.
Credit Ella Jennings
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Patrick Ford, Executive Director of the Business Development Corporation of the Northern Panhandle
In 2009, the BDC used a $200,000 grant provided by the U.S. Economic Development Administration to fund a development consultation by AECOM, a multinational engineering firm. The firm’s study identified five industries that they recommended the BDC should work to recruit to the area, which were energy, chemical, value added metals, transportation logistics, and healthcare.
Targeting these five industry clusters has so far proven fruitful for the BDC. The unemployment rate has fallen drastically in the northern panhandle. This past March, Hancock County’s unemployment rate reached a decade low of 5.3 percent, which was still trailing behind the national average of 3.8 percent. Patrick explained the Business Development Corporation’s efforts as well as other economic development organizations in the area have done a lot to bring jobs to the area.
“What we’ve been able to illustrate is that in our tri-county area, my counterpart in Jefferson County, Ohio, and the BDC, has added or preserved 7,500 jobs,” he said.
About 200 of these jobs were created when two international companies that produce equipment for the natural gas industry opened up manufacturing facilities in Weirton. They belong to a larger group of companies trying to capitalize on the natural gas boom that is redefining the landscape of the Northern Panhandle and north-central West Virginia.
Since 2005, more than 5,000 gas wells for hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, have been permitted in the state, according to a report by the Charleston Gazette-Mail’s collaboration with ProPublica. That’s because the region sits on top of enough natural gas to power all of West Virginia’s energy needs for decades.
One of the BDC’s current objectives is to help finalize the plan to build a petrochemical ethane cracker plant in Dilles Bottom, Ohio, about 40 miles down the river from Weirton.
Cracker plants get their name from their process. The plants take ethanol, a byproduct of natural gas extraction, and use extreme heat to crack its molecules. This creates ethylene, which is further processed into polyethylene, the feedstock for plastics and other chemicals. It’s what plastic grocery bags are made from, among thousands of other products.
This proposed plant, which would be owned and operated by a Thailand-based company called PTT Global Chemical, and the Shell Oil Company cracker plant already under construction in Monaca, Pennsylvania, represent nearly $20 billion dollars of possible investment and the creation of about 500 jobs at each site. Patrick said that this could lead to up to 20,000 spin-off jobs to service the people working at the cracker plants.
“For every petrochemical company job that we create, there’s going to be anywhere from two to four service jobs that are going to be created that’s going to service that one petrochemical job,” he said. “That’s 20,000 permanent jobs. Those are people that are working at the factories and those are the multipliers, permanent jobs. Back office, hospitality, restaurants, teachers.”
And, these two plants are pieces of a larger plan to develop a petrochemical corridor dubbed the Appalachian Storage and Trading Hub. The storage hub would entail a multi-billion-dollar investment of hundreds of miles of pipelines along the Ohio River connecting natural gas extraction wells with underground storage facilities and processing plants, like the ethane cracker plants.
A study by the American Chemistry Council predicts the hub could bring over 100,000 jobs to Appalachia. But these estimates all seem to exclude a very real phenomenon that is changing the nature of work as we know it: automation.
The Ohio Valley has already witnessed plenty of automation. For example, when the Basic Oxygen Plant was introduced at Weirton Steel in the late 60s, it allowed 200 tons of steel to be smelted in 25 minutes. This completely knocked out the need for open hearth furnaces, which took eight hours to do the same amount. With the help of computers, the BOP required less people and could get a lot more done, which plays into the larger story of manufacturing across the country: manufacturing employment has fallen significantly, yet productivity hasn’t slowed down.
Questions about automation give some policy analysts pause about doubling down on manufacturing investments in the region. Sean O’Leary is a senior policy analyst for the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy.
“We’re offering huge tax incentives or doing whatever we can to bring these industries in, and they’re going to come in and use resources and provide a fraction of the jobs that they did in the past,” O’Leary said. “Is that a great use of our tax dollars and our resources?”
And, just as automation has led to economic deserts throughout this area in the past, there’s a good chance it could again. With artificial intelligence and other technological advances, anything robots can do better than humans, they probably will. Jobs with routine and predictable tasks, such as those in production, food services, and transportation, will become further susceptible to having their labor done by robots.
A recent report by the Brookings Institute predicts that nearly a third of all jobs in the Weirton-Steubenville metro area are highly-susceptible to automation, meaning that 70 percent or more of the tasks completed at these jobs can be automated with technology available today. Rob Maxim, a co-author of this report and senior research analyst in the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings, said that while robots won’t eliminate all of the jobs in this high-risk category.
“What you would see, the vast majority of them, were able to be eliminated and you’d probably have a few workers basically overseeing, you know, the robots or the software where the pick and choose your kind of automation technology that would be doing the tasks instead,” he said.
And, Maxim explained that the multiplier effect, or the calculation used to estimate how many spinoff jobs will be created to service one high-paying, industrial job, doesn’t take automation into account.
“My impression of those analyses is, they tend to be good directional models, but I’m not aware of any kind of multiplier exercises that incorporate automation,” he said.
This means that the thousands of jobs that the Business Development Corporation and the American Chemistry Council predict to be created from the petrochemical industry could actually end up being far fewer than expected.
Additionally, it’s important to remember that the petrochemical industry is tied to a boom and bust cycle. This brings speculation around its long-term economic impacts on the area, as O’Leary explains.
“When you have your economy based on non-renewable resource that price fluctuates strongly,” he said. “If you’re going to have booms and busts and … eventually the well runs dry.”
Aside from automation, another part of the debate over the future of the Ohio Valley are the environmental impacts of the petrochemical industry. Pollution in the valley used to mean economic security. If smokestacks were billowing gray clouds and soot covered your front porch, your parents probably had a good paying job. But now, with the mills and plants offering less and less jobs, some residents are questioning if the economic benefits can outweigh the environmental costs.
I met with Beverly Reed, a lifelong resident of the Ohio Valley, at her family’s bicycle shop in Bridgeport, Ohio. Bridgeport is just across the river from Wheeling, West Virginia, and a little over 10 miles north of the proposed PTTG cracker plant.
Beverly is an intern for the Sierra Club, and works with the FreshWater Accountability Project as well as the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition. All of these groups have a shared goal.
“The biggest thing we would like to do is to stop the PTT Global Petrochemical Complex from coming to Belmont County, Ohio,” she said.
Credit Ella Jennings
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Beverly Reed
Beverly is a registered nurse, and she said one of her primary concerns with the cracker plant is the effect it could have on the health of both humans and the environment.
Last year, the Ohio EPA granted the project an air pollution permit. It allows the proposed cracker to emit millions of tons of greenhouse gases each year. It would be like putting 365,000 cars on the road. The permit also allows for the emission of almost 400 tons of volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, each year. VOCs are a group of gases that react with sunlight and nitrogen oxides to create ground-level ozone, or smog. Not all VOCs are detrimental to human health, but many are known carcinogens, such as benzene, which can leak from the valves and equipment used in cracker plants. Reed said that the Sierra Club and three other environmental groups are challenging this air permit.
“We’re appealing it because it was woefully inadequate and not protective of human health,” she said.
With only nine percent of plastic recycled worldwide, Beverly is also troubled by the plant’s possible contribution to an already established plastic crisis.
“It’s toxic. We don’t need more of it. It’s killing the oceans, it’s killing all the marine life. It’s killing us. It’s found everywhere,” Reed said.
Ultimately, even though the region desperately needs high-paying jobs, she doesn’t believe that this should be the path forward for the Ohio Valley.
“People think that this is going to be our knight in shining armor. It’s gonna bail us all out. We’re going to be thriving and everything, but that’s not going to be the case. It’s not plain and simple. It’s not,” she said. “It’s going to be short term economic gain while the plant’s being built.
Reed said she doesn’t believe the short-term economic boom is worth it.
“I mean, we’d probably see business in here, you know, but I don’t care, you know, my family doesn’t care,” she said. “We care more about future generations and the environment.”
There are many trajectories that the Ohio Valley could follow. One anticipates billions of dollars of investment, thousands of jobs and national importance, as there is only one other petrochemical hub in the United States. A lot of money and political power are backing this route, but its disregard for automation could leave its economic revival looking far less human than anticipated. And, the environmental factors involved make some afraid it could turn the area into a cancer alley. All of which are narratives and realities the Ohio Valley is already familiar with.
Another vision comes from the environmentalist standpoint, and sees the valley as a hub of green energy and localized farming. Yet, with a much smaller budget and a lack of political support, the puzzle of how to supply sustainable jobs for the valley is still one to be solved.
One truth that needs no speculation is that Weirton and the Ohio Valley deserve justice for its economic pain and suffering. No one will ever serve jail time for the mill shutdowns that led to a mass exodus from the area, broken families, and financially driven suicides. I’m not calling for some sort of retribution, but a question I continually asked myself throughout this series was, “why did we deserve this?” This same question is probably asked all across the American Heartland, as more and more people are left wondering how their prosperity came crashing to an end.
And yeah, I know, life isn’t fair. But there are reasons why mills close, and there are reasons why there are no safety nets for those who slip through the cracks.
What Are Your Hopes for Weirton?
Earlier this year, I went to the Festival of Nations at the Millsop Community Center in downtown Weirton. The very first festival started on May Day in 1934 during tense labor strife, as the mill’s management attempted to make peace with the workers following a strike the year before.
Credit Ella Jennings
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Traditional Indian dancers perform at the Festival of Nations
For several years, the festival served as a celebration of the many ethnic groups that came to town to work in the mill, but it died out during World War II. The Weirton Area Museum and Cultural Center brought it back in 2009, and ever since the gathering has brought together hundreds of Weirton citizens to celebrate their community once more.
The average age of the population in Weirton is about 46 years old, and it showed in the crowd. I only saw one other girl around my age, and she happened to be the daughter of one of the organizers. Still, the mood was lively as people enjoyed dancing from a range of groups, like Ukrainian folk dancers and traditional Indian ensembles.
Credit Ella Jennings
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Clemmie Frierson engaged in conversation at the Festival of Nations
My original plan was to stay for an hour, but the conversations I had kept me going until the food vendors were packing up. From young to old, everyone had an opinion about their hopes for the area. I wanted to end this episode by leading out with the voices of the people I spoke to, the voices of those from Weirton, a mill town in West Virginia.
(The following are direct quotes from attendees of the Festival of Nations in Weirton on March 16, 2019.)
Carrie Stephenson:
I am just hoping for a better community for our area and Weirton, West Virginia.
Jack Provenzano:
I hope they could go back to the old Weirton, what it used to be.
Susan Buteri:
I would like to see all the companies come back into Weirton.
Caleb Owen:
I’m hoping that since they just took down the steel mill, they actually turn that into something that can kind of like, you know, bring some entertainment to the town.
Emalee Hbizdak:
I just hope we’re going to keep going like in the right direction. More jobs and more community like activities and stuff. Get people involved.
Tonya Parker:
If they can bring something into that area that will create jobs for this area, that would be a good thing, in my opinion.
Ernest Nicholas Sr.:
We shall continue to grow up. We’ll come back to life. We’ve got the right people and we will prosper.
Janet Barbario:
Yeah, we’d like more businesses to come to the area. So many kids can only work at Mcdonald’s, you know.
Missy Mikula:
I’m hoping to see revitalization here in town now that we’ve lost our Weirton Steel. So, we hope to see new industries coming in and certainly new housing, we need it.
Linda Stear:
My hopes for Weirton are that it’ll continue to grow and we’ll see a lot of growth in jobs and housing and just the future looks pretty bright right now for the Weirton community. And we’re pretty happy about it.
Makenzie Stear:
My hopes are for Weirton, well, that we expand and we try to clean up downtown.
Diana Magnone:
I would really like them to do things to bring back the millennials and the Gen Xers to have them have a reason to come back. Um, one thing that may help that is more of a build up things like green spaces.
Kalpana Gupta:
With the steel mill going down, the only way to replace it is to have new businesses come in.
Sneha Gupta
Having people realize that the people of Weirton actually have a lot to offer, too. Yeah, I think, I think it’s, it’s looking like a bright, bright future.
Clemmie Frierson:
I’m upset because I like the city council. But there’s no females, there’s no people of color on the city council. I’m on the board of transportation as a director. I’m the only person of color and it bothers me that they’re not really reaching out to the community the way they should. So like in terms of Weirton, Weirton could grow. But they need the input from a different set of people.
Gaetano Provenzano:
I like the idea of diversity in the valley as the valley continues to grow.
John McCugh:
I think, speak honestly, I think a lot of people in this town need to realize progression and change is good. So, let loose of what we were in the 70s and let’s move into the future.
Dan Greathouse
I expect a lot of great things to happen to Weirton over the next five years. I see us growing.
Rachel English:
I would like to see the valley come alive again.
Colton Kolanko:
My hopes for Weirton are that, everyone can, I guess, achieve their pursuit of happiness, whatever that may be. And that… everyone has the opportunity, I guess that they deserve, because everyone deserves opportunities. Even Weirton, even the small town of Weirton.
A coalition of environmental groups is challenging an air quality permit issued to a proposed petrochemical plant along the Ohio River.
Ohio EPA issued the air quality permit to the PTT Global Chemical America project, proposed for Belmont County, Ohio, in late December.
The plan, called an ethane cracker, would use high heat to break down 1.5 million tons of ethane each year into smaller molecules used in plastics and chemical manufacturing.
Ethane is brought up during natural gas fracking.
The Sierra Club, Center for Biological Diversity, Earthworks and Freshwater Accountability Project filed an appeal of the air quality permit Friday to the Ohio Environmental Review Appeals Commission.
They argue the state underestimated the amount of pollution the plant will emit should have required more effective technology to reduce those emissions.
The permit would allow the cracker to release almost 400 tons of volatile organic compounds each year and produce the equivalent carbon dioxide emissions of putting about 365,000 cars on the road.
At a public hearing in November, state EPA officials said air quality and public health would not be impacted by the plant. Dozens of local residents and environmental groups testified they had concerns.
The plant would be the second cracker built in the Ohio Valley.
