West Virginia Bets Big on Plastics, and on Backing of Trump Administration

The state’s leaders want a federal loan guarantee to build a giant chemical storage plant that could cost as much as $10 billion.


West Virginia’s industrial might has faded, but as 2020 approaches, the state has two resources that could be crucial to President Donald Trump as he seeks reelection and tries to make good on his pledge of “American energy dominance” — Republican votes and abundant natural gas.

It was a stretch of rural counties along the Ohio River in West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania that form the largest natural gas field in the world and helped Trump win the states in 2016.

West Virginia’s elected leaders see the vast reserves as a path to renewed political and economic relevance for the Mountain State, which they envision rivaling the Gulf Coast as a center for processing natural gas and producing plastics.

And to make that a reality, the state’s top officials have lined up behind a plan to spend as much as $10 billion to build a mammoth underground storage facility — big enough to hold the U.S. Capitol complex, or 10 million barrels of the liquid byproducts used in plastics manufacturing.

Read more: https://www.propublica.org/article/appalachian-storage-and-trading-hub-ethane-west-virginia-plastics-backing-of-trump-administration