PITTSBURGH — Proponents of a massive Shell plastics plant in Pennsylvania promised the site would bring economic development to a long-struggling region. Those promises have failed to materialize, according to a new report.
Western Pennsylvania’s Beaver County, which is home to the plant, lags behind the rest of the state and the nation in nearly every measure of economic activity, according to the report, which was authored by the Ohio River Valley Institute, a progressive, nonprofit think tank.
The report looked at the most recently available federal data from the Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Bureau of Economic Analysis, and found that since Shell’s massive petrochemical plant was proposed in 2012, Beaver County fell behind the state and the nation in job growth, even when factoring in temporary construction workers at the Shell site before it opened.
The report also found that Beaver County lost population while Pennsylvania maintained residents and the U.S. population grew. It also found the county lost businesses despite an increase in new business at the state and national levels.
“Since the announcement of the Shell petrochemical plant, Beaver County has also actually lost GDP,” Eric de Place, lead author of the report, said during a press briefing. “Not only has it fallen behind the state and the country, it has also lost ground since 2012, which is troubling.”
The report also found that since the plant was proposed in 2012, Beaver County’s poverty rate has fallen at a slower rate than average national and state poverty levels, and that the county’s child poverty rate has surpassed the state’s and the nation’s. Income levels in Beaver County rose at the same rate as in the rest of the state and the country.
Shell’s plant takes fracked ethane gas and turns it into tiny plastic pellets that are ultimately used to make plastic products like bags and packaging. Fossil fuel companies like Shell are increasingly turning toward plastics production to keep their products in demand as the transportation sector shifts toward renewables and the world decarbonizes, and many new plants like the Shell ethane cracker in Pennsylvania have been proposed throughout the U.S.
When Shell first proposed its Pennsylvania plastics plant, Pennsylvania lawmakers gave the company a $1.7 billion subsidy — the largest subsidy ever offered by the state at the time — to bring the plant to Beaver County. Many local and state politicians touted the economic benefits the plant was expected to bring to the region, while environmental and health advocates expressed concerns about the plant’s pollution and projected public health costs.
Those concerns proved valid: The plant began operations in November 2022, and by December it had already exceeded several of its yearly air pollution limits. The plant was temporarily shut down and fined $10 million dollars by the state for the violations, and several environmental advocacy groups are suing the plant for its pollution.
Unmet economic projections
Many of the plant’s supporters have pointed to a study commissioned by Shell and conducted by Robert Morris University researchers in 2021, which projected that the Shell ethane cracker would bring $260 million to $846 million in annual economic activity in Beaver County alone, and an annual economic impact of approximately $3.3 billion in the surrounding 10-county region. The modeling methods used in the study were thoroughly criticized by other academics for overinflating these projections at the time.
“That Robert Morris report had tremendous flaws in terms of assumptions about economic multipliers,” Kathy Hiple, a finance professor at Bard College and former financial analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, told Environmental Health News(EHN). Hipple conducts research for the Ohio River Valley Institute, but was not involved in the new report.
“It’s really important for people to go back now and say, let’s take stock and see if these economic benefits are coming to pass,” Hipple said. “This new study clearly shows that they aren’t.”
Brian O'Roark, the lead author of the Robert Morris study, did not respond to our request for comments on the methods used in his study and the findings in the new report.
“Do you want to move into the shadow of a petrochemical facility?”
EHN reached out to the Beaver County Chamber of Commerce and policymakers who supported the development of the Shell ethane cracker and touted the economic benefits it promised to bring to Beaver County, including Beaver County Commissioner Jack Manning and Republican state senator Elder Vogel Jr., who represents the town where the cracker plant is located. None responded to our requests for comment about the report. This story will be updated if we receive comments.
Shell spokesperson Curtis Thomas also declined to comment on the new study. After sharing the Robert Morris study and questioning the validity of the data used to conduct the new study (which are all publicly available government data), Thomas asked why Shell would be invited to comment on a study about the economic plight of Beaver County, saying the company is just there to do business. “I could tell you we certainly hope our presence here brings economic development,” he added.
DePlace noted that the Shell plant employs only a few hundred people — no more than a typical school district — and said Beaver County should serve as a cautionary tale to other economically depressed regions with dwindling populations.
“If you’re looking at moving from somewhere else, do you want to move into the shadow of a petrochemical facility, or do you want to move someplace that looks pretty similar but has great bike trails and nice restaurants?” DePlace said.
“The evidence suggests that long-term economic growth comes from making sure a community is clean and has an array of diversified local businesses, not a giant petrochemical multinational with a pollution profile that only has a few hundred workers on site.”
A new wave of companies, including AstroForge, aims to mine asteroids for valuable metals like platinum and cobalt, which are essential for electronics and electric vehicle batteries.
Despite previous failures in asteroid mining, current prospects are bolstered by reduced rocket costs and favorable regulatory changes, sparking renewed interest.
Innovations such as simulated extraction missions and telescopes for detecting asteroids are among the strategies companies are deploying to realize their cosmic ambitions.
Key quote:
“People were much more supportive of mining asteroids than other forms of frontier mining like mining the ocean floor, mining Antarctica, and mining the Alaskan tundra."
— Matthew Hornsey, University of Queensland, lead study author.
Why this matters:
Space mining presents a potentially less environmentally damaging alternative to terrestrial extraction, especially crucial for clean energy technologies. However, the challenges of space debris and ethical concerns about cosmic exploitation remain formidable.
CAMERON PARISH, La. — Late into the night, John Allaire watches the facility next to his home shoot 300-foot flares from stacks.
He lives within eyesight of southwest Louisiana’s salty shores, where, for decades, he’s witnessed nearly 200 feet of land between it and his property line disappear into the sea. Two-thirds of the land was rebuilt to aid the oil and gas industry’s LNG expansion. LNG — shorthand for liquified natural gas – is natural gas that's cooled to liquid form for easier storage or transport; it equates to 1/600th the volume of natural gas in a gaseous state. It’s used to generate electricity, or fuel stove tops and home heaters, and in industrial processes like manufacturing fertilizer.
In the U.S., at least 30 new LNG terminal facilities have been constructed or proposed since 2016, according to the
Oil and Gas Watch project. Louisiana and Texas’ Gulf Coast, where five facilities are already operating, will host roughly two-thirds of the new LNG terminals – meaning at least 22 Gulf Coast LNG facilities are currently under construction, were recently approved to break ground or are under further regulatory review.
Although the U.S. didn’t ship LNG until 2016, when a freight tanker left, a few miles from where Cameron Parish’s LNG plants are today, last year the country became the global leader in LNG production and export volume, leapfrogging exporters like Qatar and Australia. The
EIA’s most recent annual outlook estimated that between the current year and 2050, U.S. LNG exports will increase by 152%.
Allaire, 68, watches how saltwater collects where rainwater once fed the area’s diminishing coastal wetlands. “We still come down here with the kids and set out the fishing rods. It's not as nice as it used to be,” he told
Environmental Health News (EHN).
That intimacy with nature drew Allaire to the area when he purchased 311 acres in 1998. An environmental engineer and 30-year oil and gas industry veteran, he helped lead environmental assessments and manage clean-ups, and although retired, he still works part-time as an environmental consultant with major petroleum companies. With a lifetime of oil and gas industry expertise, he’s watched the industry's footprint spread across Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico’s fragile shores and beyond. Now that the footprints are at the edge of his backyard, Allaire is among a cohort of organizers, residents and fisher-folk in the region mobilizing to stop LNG facility construction. For him, the industry’s expansion usurps the right-or-wrong ethics he carried across his consulting career. For anglers, oil and gas infrastructure has destroyed fishing grounds and prevented smaller vessels from accessing the seafood-rich waters of the Calcasieu River.
From the view of Allaire’s white pickup truck as he drives across his property to the ocean’s shore, he points to where a new LNG facility will replace marshlands. Commonwealth LNG intends to clear the land of trees and then backfill the remaining low-lying field.
“You see what’s happening with the environment,” Allaire said. “When the facts change, I got to change my mind about what we’re doing.”
Community bands together
John Allaire, left, purchased 311 acres in Cameron Parish in 1998, and has watched the oil and gas industry's footprint spread to his property.
Credit: John Allaire
During an Earth Day rally in April, community members gathered in the urban center of Lake Charles to demand local oil and gas industries help deliver a safer, healthier future for all. In between live acts by artists performing south Louisiana’s quintessential zydeco musical style, speakers like James Hiatt, a Calcasieu Parish native with ties to Cameron Parish and a Healthy Gulf organizer, and RISE St. James organizer Sharon Lavigne, who’s fighting against LNG development in rural Plaquemines Parish near the city of New Orleans, asked the nearly 100 in attendance to imagine a day in which the skyline isn’t dotted by oil and gas infrastructure.
Not long ago, it was hard to imagine an Earth Day rally in southwest Louisiana at all. For decades, the area has been decorated with fossil fuel infrastructure. Sunsets on some days are highlighted by the chemicals in the air; at night, thousands of facilities’ lights dot the dark sky.
“It takes a lot of balls for people to start speaking up,” Shreyas Vasudevan, a campaign researcher with the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, told EHN in the days after the rally. In a region with its history and economy intertwined with oil and gas production, “you can get a lot of social criticism – or ostracization, as well – even threats to your life.”
Many are involved in local, regional and national advocacy groups, including the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, Healthy Gulf, the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Turtle Island Restoration Network, the Center for Biological Diversity and the National Audubon Society.
“You see what’s happening with the environment,” Allaire said. “When the facts change, I got to change my mind about what we’re doing.” - John Allaire, environmental engineer and 30-year oil and gas industry veteran
But environmental organizers are fighting a multi-billion-dollar industry with federal and state winds at its back. And LNG’s federal support is coupled with existing state initiatives.
Under outgoing Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards — a term-limited Democrat — the state pledged a goal of reaching net-zero greenhouse emissions by 2050. Natural gas, which the LNG industry markets as a cleaner-burning alternative, is cited as one of the state’s solutions. Louisiana is the only state that produces a majority of its carbon emissions through fossil fuels refining industries, like LNG, rather than energy production or transportation. Governor Edwards’ office did not return EHN’s request for comment.
This accommodating attitude towards oil and gas industries has resulted in a workforce that’s trained to work in LNG refining facilities across much of the rural Gulf region, said Steven Miles, a lawyer at Baker Botts LLP and a fellow at the Baker Institute’s Center on Energy Studies. Simultaneously, anti-industrialization pushback is lacking. It’s good news for industries like LNG.
“The bad news,” Miles added. “[LNG facilities] are all being jammed in the same areas.”
One rallying cry for opponents is local health. The Environmental Integrity Project found that LNG export terminals emit chemicals like carbon monoxide –potentially deadly– and sulfur dioxide, of which the American Lung Association says long-term exposure can lead to heart disease, cancer, and damage to internal or female reproductive organs.
An analysis of emissions monitoring reports by the advocacy group the Louisiana Bucket Brigade found that Venture Global’s existing Calcasieu Pass facility had more than 2,000 permit violations.That includes exceeding the permit’s authorized air emissions limit to release nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, particulate matter and volatile organic compounds 286 out of its first 343 days of operation.
The Marvel Crane, the first liquid natural gas carrier to transport natural gas from the Southwest Louisiana LNG facility, transits a channel in Hackberry, Louisiana, May 28, 2019.
“This is just one facility,” at a time when three more facilities have been proposed in the region and state, Vasudevan said. Venture Global’s operational LNG facility — also known as Calcasieu Pass — “is much smaller than the other facility they’ve proposed.”
In an area that experienced 18 feet of storm surge during Hurricane Laura in 2020 — and just weeks later, struck by Hurricane Delta — Venture Global is planning to build a second export terminal Known as “CP2,” it’s the largest of the roughly two dozen proposed Gulf LNG export terminals, and a key focal point for the region’s local organizing effort.
Residents “don’t really want LNG as much as they want Cameron [Parish] from 1990 back,” Hiatt told EHN of locals’ nostalgia for a community before storms like Rita in 2005 brought up to 15 feet of storm surge, only for Laura to repeat the damage in 2020. Throughout that time, the parish’s population dipped from roughly 10,000 to 5,000. “But the wolf knocking at the door is LNG. Folks in Cameron think that's going to bring back community, bring back the schools, bring back this time before we had all these storms — when Cameron was pretty prosperous.”
“Clearly,” for the oil and gas industry, “the idea is to transform what was once the center of commercial fishing in Louisiana to gas exports,” Cindy Robertson, an environmental activist in southwest Louisiana, told EHN.
Helping fishers’ impacted by LNG is about “actual survival of this unique culture,” Cooke said.
In a measure of organizers’ success, she pointed to a recent permit hearing for Venture Global’s CP2 proposal. Regionally, it’s the only project that’s received an environmental permit, but not its export permit, which remains under federal review. At the meeting, some spoke on the company’s behalf. As an organizer, it was a moment of clarity, Cooke explained. Venture Global officials “had obviously done a lot of coaching and organizing and getting people together in Cameron to speak out on their behalf,” Cooke said. “So, in a way, that was bad. But in another way, it shows that we really had an impact.”
“It also shows that we have a lot to do,” Cooke added.
Environmental organizers like Alyssa Portaro describe a sense of fortitude among activists — she and her husband to the region’s nearby town of Vinton near the Texas-Louisiana border. Since the families’ relocation to their farm, Portaro has worked with Cameron Parish fisher-folk.
“I’ve not witnessed ‘community’ anywhere like there is in Louisiana,” Portaro told EHN. But a New Jersey native, she understands the toll environmental pollution has on low-income communities. “This environment, it’s so at risk — and it’s currently getting sacrificed to big industries.”
“People don’t know what we’d do without oil and gas. It comes at a big price,” she added.
Southwest Louisiana’s Cameron Parish is one of the state’s most rural localities. Marine economies were the area’s economic drivers until natural disasters and LNG facilities began pushing locals out, commercial fishers claim.
Credit: Xander Peters for Environmental Health News
Residents “don’t really want LNG as much as they want Cameron [Parish] from 1990 back,” James Hiatt , a Healthy Gulf organizer, told EHN. "But the wolf knocking at the door is LNG."
Credit: Xander Peters for Environmental Health News
For the most part, Cameron Parish’s life and economy has historically taken place at sea. As new LNG facilities are operational or in planning locally, locals claim the community they once knew is nearly unrecognizable.
Credit: Xander Peters for Environmental Health News
A disappearing parish
The stakes are seemingly higher for a region like southwest Louisiana, which is the epicenter of climate change impacts.
In nearly a century, the state has lost roughly 2,000 square miles of land to coastal erosion. In part driving the state’s erosion crisis is the compounding impacts of Mississippi River infrastructure and oil and gas industry activity, such as dredging canals for shipping purposes, according to a March study published in the journal Nature Sustainability. Louisiana’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority said Cameron Parish could lose more land than other coastal parishes over the next 50 years. A recent Climate Central report says the parish will be underwater within that time frame.
On top of erosion and sea level rise impacts, in August, 2023, marshland across southwest Louisiana’s Cameron Parish burned. The fires were among at least 600 across the Bayou State this year. Statewide, roughly 60,000 acres burned — a more than six-fold increase of the state’s average acres burned per year in the past decade alone.
But while the blaze avoided coastal Louisiana communities like Cameron Parish, the fires represented a warning coming from a growing chorus of locals across the region — one that’s echoes by the local commercial fishing population, who claimed to have experienced unusually low yields during the same time, according to a statement from a local environmental group. At the site of the Cameron Parish fires are locations for two proposed LNG expansion projects.
"The idea is to transform what was once the center of commercial fishing in Louisiana to gas exports.” - Cindy Robertson, an environmental activist in southwest Louisiana
It was an unusual occurrence for an area that’s more often itself underwater this time of year due to a storm surge from powerful storms. For LNG expansion’s local opposition, it was a red flag.
As the Louisiana Bucket Brigade has noted prior, the confluence of climate change’s raising of sea levels and the construction of LNG export terminals — some are proposed at the size of nearly 700 football fields — are wiping away the marshland folks like Allaire watched wither. Among their fears is that the future facilities won’t be able to withstand the power of another storm like Laura and its storm surge, which wiped away entire communities in 2020.
Amidst these regional climate impacts, LNG infrastructure has shown potential to exacerbate the accumulation of greenhouse gasses that cause global warming. For the most part, LNG is made up of methane — a greenhouse gas that’s more than 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Among the 22 current LNG facility proposals, the advocacy group Sierra Club described a combined climate pollution output that would roughly equal to that of about 440 coal plants.
The climate impacts prompt some of the LNG industry’s uncertainty going forward. It isn’t clear if Asian countries, key importers of U.S. LNG, will “embrace these energy transition issues,” said David Dismuke, an energy consultant and the former executive director of Louisiana State University’s Center for Energy Studies. Likewise, European nations remain skeptical of embracing LNG as a future staple fuel source.
“They really don't want to have to pull the trigger,” Dismukes added, referring to Europe’s hesitation to commit more resources to exporting LNG from the American market. “They don't want to go down that road.”
While there will be a tapering down of natural gas supply, Miles explained, “we’re going to need natural gas for a long time,” as larger battery storage for renewables is still unavailable.
“I'm not one of these futurists that can tell you where we're going to be, but I just don't see everything being extreme,” Dismukes said. “I don't see what we've already built getting stranded and going away, either.”
For now, LNG seems here to stay. From 2012 to 2022,U.S. natural gas demand — the sum of both domestic consumption and gross exports — rose by a whopping 43%, reported the U.S. Energy Information Administration, or EIA. Meanwhile, in oil and gas hotbeds like Louisiana and Texas, natural gas demand grew by 116%.
Throughout 25 years, Allaire has witnessed southwest Louisiana’s land slowly fade, in part driven by the same industrial spread regionally. Near where the front door of his travel trailer sits underneath the aluminum awning, he points to a chenier ridge located near the end of the property. It’s disappearing, he said.
“See the sand washing over, in here?” Allaire says, as he points towards the stretches of his property. “This pond used to go down for a half mile. This is all that's left of it on this side.”
Florida's proposed bill redefines its energy policy, emphasizing energy independence and security while removing references to climate change.
The legislation seeks to cancel renewable energy targets set in 2022, advocating instead for a reduction in reliance on foreign energy sources.
If signed by Governor Ron DeSantis, the bill would dismantle initiatives from previous administrations that aimed to address greenhouse gas emissions.
Key quote:
“We are literally watching south Florida go extinct while our government promotes the very entities that perpetuate these antiquated ways of business that are causing the problems in the first place.”
— Delaney Reynolds, University of Miami student
Why this matters:
This legislation has profound implications for Florida's environmental and health policies, essentially sidelining climate change considerations in favor of economic growth and energy security. As a state particularly vulnerable to climate impacts, the redirection could have lasting effects on its resilience in the face of future environmental challenges. Read more: With Ian, treat climate like an 'active shooter.'
Nearly $7 trillion has been funneled to fossil fuel companies by major banks since the Paris climate agreement, intensifying the global climate crisis.
Prof Dame Sally Davies, the UK’s special envoy on antimicrobial resistance, emphasizes the urgent need to address superbug resistance, which she views as more severe than climate change.
Drug-resistant infections, killing over 1.2 million people annually, could jeopardize modern medical procedures like surgeries and cancer treatments if not controlled.
The UK government has launched a national action plan to curb the misuse of antimicrobials and foster new treatments and vaccines.
Key quote:
“It looks like a lot of people with untreatable infections, and we would have to move to isolating people who were untreatable in order not to infect their families and communities. So it’s a really disastrous picture.”
— Prof Dame Sally Davies, former chief medical officer
A plan to capture and store carbon dioxide underground in Montana faces fierce local opposition, despite being backed by major oil companies and the Biden administration.
The proposed project aims to store carbon emissions underground in Carter County, Montana, to combat climate change.
Local ranchers and residents fear the impact on the environment and community, citing a lack of desire to become a national "dumping ground."
Existing carbon capture projects face similar issues nationally, raising concerns about safety, environmental impacts, and technology effectiveness.
Key quote:
"They are presenting this as a climate solution and I don’t know that it is. The only thing I do know is that it is part of their plan to continue producing oil and gas."
— Liz Barbour, manager of Cinch Buckle Ranch
Why this matters:
Many local residents and environmental groups are raising concerns about the safety and long-term impacts of storing carbon underground. Fears of potential leaks, groundwater contamination, and seismic activity echo through community meetings and public forums. Critics argue that such projects allow fossil fuel companies to continue business as usual, prolonging reliance on oil and gas rather than transitioning to renewable energy sources.
Juan Mancias, chairman of the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas, confronts fossil fuel developments threatening ancient burial sites and village grounds in the Rio Grande Delta.
The region faces significant industrialization threats from projects like Texas LNG, which plans to build on a site with deep historical significance.
Despite the lack of federal recognition, Mancias advocates for the protection and recognition of his tribe's ancestral lands and their cultural heritage.
Key quote:
"They almost annihilated us and that genocide continues. To destroy the environment you have to destroy the people who protect it."
— Juan Mancias, chairman of the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas
Why this matters:
The lands in question, steeped in centuries of history and tradition, are home to sacred sites and are rich in biodiversity, acting as crucial habitats for local wildlife. Mancias’s opposition is fueled by concerns that extend beyond sovereignty. The environmental repercussions of such projects—increased emissions, potential spills, and habitat destruction—pose a significant threat to the local ecosystems and to the broader health of the planet. This is particularly poignant in an era where the impacts of climate change are becoming more unpredictable and severe.
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