It’s a big news day for West Virginia oil and gas.

Joe Eddy, President and CEO of Eagle Manufacturing out of Wellsburg, WV says that the Marcellus/Utica region could support eight or nine cracker plants right now.  Come again?  Why is it, then that there are only three planned, and one of those is awfully tentative?

We’d love to see a bunch of cracker plants.  There’s an awful lot of gas in the ground that could be processed in cracker plants.  Having that much more petrochemical feedstock would drive prices down for industry, and those savings would be passed on to consumers.  It would be yet another way the fracking boom would improve our economy.  We just kind of wonder how eight or nine could be possible when one of three is having a hard time getting off the ground.