Odebrecht has been talking with major players in the state about the cracker plant that’s been planned for Parkersburg, West Virginia. The current news is that the plant will be changed. Our guess is that the plant will be made smaller, perhaps with an eye to expansion when oil prices rise again someday. Here’s to hoping that they do get around to building it. That plant would be great for our economy.
This is disappointing. The ASCENT project, the ethane cracker plant that is planned for Parkersburg, WV, has been put on hold. There are other plants that are planned for the region, but none in West Virginia. It would be a good thing for West Virginia to have one of these plants built here. The jobs and tax money would do Parkersburg a lot of good economically. It would put the ethane produced here in West Virginia to a better use than just being placed into the pipelines with the methane and sold for heating purposes.
The good news is that the project hasn’t been cancelled. Odebrecht says it will still be completed in 2020, just a few years later than previously scheduled.