Editorial, Wheeling Intelligencer, March 6, 2015

Demand for electricity generated at natural gas-fired power plants is up and will increase even more as a result of the Environmental Protection Agency’s campaign to shut down coal-fueled generating stations.

That already has proven to be an opportunity in Marshall County. There, a New York developer plans to build a gas-fired power plant near Moundsville.

Now, a developer linked to the firm involved in Marshall County, operating under a different company name, is considering two power plants in Brooke County.

As we reported this week, Energy Solutions is considering the plants at the site of the old Wheeling Corrugating factory in Beech Bottom.

Commissioners signed memorandums of understanding with the company on Tuesday. But Matt Dorn, one of the firm’s owners, noted the action “is the first step.” He added, however, “It’s a big step, and we’re going to do everything we can to make these projects happen.”

Construction of the plants at Beech Bottom is not a foregone conclusion, two other company representatives cautioned. Sites in Ohio and Pennsylvania also are being considered, they said.

As the experience in Marshall County taught area residents, merely clearing the way for such a venture is a complicated, time-consuming effort. Among other things, various concerns about the depth of county government involvement need to be ironed out. That happened in Marshall County, so it ought to be possible to the north, too.

Area residents also are aware that the long-term benefit of the current gas drilling boom lies at least as much with processors and end-users of the fuel as with finding and producing the gas. The Energy Solutions plan is an example of that.

Construction of the power plants will provide temporary jobs for hundreds of local workers. Once the facilities are completed, each plant will need about 60 employees for operation. The jobs will be good ones, paying about $80,000 a year.

Brooke County commissioners cannot “give away the farm” to land the power plants, of course. There will be limits as to what they can do in cooperating with Energy Solutions. But they should make every reasonable effort to do so – and bring valuable, long-term development to the county.

By Linda Harris, Weirton Daily Times, March 5, 2013

Beech Bottom, WV – The old Wheeling Corrugating plant has its first tenant, a Tulsa, Okla.-based pipeline company that will be installing a 40-mile-plus section of pipeline from just north of Washington, PA, through the Northern Panhandle to Ohio, bringing hundreds of jobs to the region.

Sheehan Pipeline, a union contractor, will use the site as a staging area, with trailers for its administrative offices and doctors as well as equipment storage.

They’ll be hiring between 400 and 500 union laborers, Teamsters, operating engineers and welders, fitters, journeymen and helpers, at least half of them local, officials explained.