R. T. Walker, Real Estate Broker, CBRE, LLC

https://cbreemail.com/rv/ff011624e7988c03f92a89548840b5edfd59d256

From the Editorial Board, Citizen’s Voice, Wilkes-Barre, Penna., October 11, 2019

Apparently motivated by a massive state tax giveaway in Western Pennsylvania to one of the world’s largest and wealthiest corporations, some state legislators want to lavish more incentives on gas-related enterprises, including in Northeast Pennsylvania.

Royal Dutch Shell, the world’s fourth largest company with an estimated market value of $272 billion, is constructing a petrochemical refinery in Beaver County to take advantage of the site’s proximity to vast amounts of “wet” natural gas from the Marcellus Shale. It will break down, or “crack” ethane from the gas stream to produce plastics that can be used in innumerable applications.

The state government has committed a record $1.7 billion in tax incentives to Shell to build the plant, final costs for which will fall somewhere between $6 billion and $10 billion, according to an array of industry estimates. Shell reported 2018 profits of $21.4 billion.

Recently the state Housed a bill that would provide whopping tax incentives of up to 20% for companies that build large, gas-based manufacturing plants for materials such as fertilizer.

Democratic state Rep. Marty Flynn of Scranton claims that several companies have scouted Lackawanna County’s Upvalley region as a potential site for a plant or plants, and that final passage of the massive tax incentive bill will help drive their decisions.

To qualify, a company would have to invest at least $1 billion in a new plant.

The rush to forfeit potential state tax revenue raises the question of why it is necessary, if proximity to the needed gas is the key to the manufacturing processes involved.

State legislators have created a scenario under which they refuse to impose a modest extraction tax on natural gas while readily forfeiting other potential state revenue to create huge markets for the gas industry.

It’s time for them to cut in all state taxpayers by creating a fair extraction tax comparable to those imposed on the industry in other tax-producing states. That would convert the race from one to give away the store to one to ensure that the entire commonwealth benefits from the growing enterprise.

https://www.citizensvoice.com/opinion/hard-to-justify-gas-related-tax-incentive-1.2543916

Submitted to C&EN Web-Site, August 13, 2019 at 12:09 AM

One statement on this article’s content is made by Ken Moseley who stated that the “community and industry must co-exist”. I strongly disagree and wish his statement had been made in my presence.

The chemical industry has such to answer for, and if we continue to allow such industries to operate in communities that have repeatedly suffered behind imprisonment in our homes behind plant production mishaps, the inability of seniors and poor households who do not have the means to escape when instructed by State and County officials, living with constant fear based on numerous explosions, constant misinformation regarding chemical identification released and the adverse impact on residence health, environment (air, water and soil), to coexist equals a death sentence and long duration sicknesses.

Mr. Moseley is living a fantasy but readily admits our residents will unlikely be employed by such industries but employed in lessor wage paying offsets. In otherwords, disrupt our lives, destroy our health, run us out of our homes when accidents take place on plant property and we will coexist because….what? Jobs!

The chemical industry and communities such as Institute will never coexist. We’ll die out (sic) and they’ll buy up the land they polluted and still people will become sick, suffer and die and no one will be held responsible. The wealthy industrialists will get richer on the backs of the slaves America has made of those industries neighbors.