The state needs to be positioned to compete for other jobs as well
Shale gas is the biggest economic opportunity to hit West Virginia in generations.
Joe Eddy, president and chief executive officer of Eagle Manufacturing in Wellsburg, heads a company that was founded in 1894 as a decorative glass factory.
The glass industry has just about left the state, but. Eagle adapted. The company now makes a variety of industrial safety, hazardous materials and storage properties that help in the extraction of natural gas.
As chairman of the West Virginia Manufacturers Association, Eddy wants people to look beyond merely extracting natural gas from the Marcellus shale field, and at the environment for all manufacturing.
There is more at stake than just crackers.
“It seems like people are just focusing on the (ethane) cracker,” Eddy told the Wheeling Intelligencer. “That is only one piece of the picture. I’m not sure enough people are looking at the whole picture when it comes to what this cracker would mean.”
While the Legislature has focused on getting a cracker for the direct jobs it will create, producing from the Marcellus shale will produce other jobs that this state will compete with Ohio and Pennsylvania to get.
Eddy didn’t mention it, but the same property tax on business equipment that was a problem in efforts to land a cracker is a drag on those other jobs as well. Neither Ohio or Pennsylvania has such a tax.
West Virginia cannot afford that.
The same problem exists in all industries in the state. West Virginia has succeeded in making itself a place that doesn’t get all the investments it could.
The state’s policies need to be competitive if its citizens are to have manufacturing job opportunities.
Shale gas is the biggest economic opportunity to hit West Virginia in generations. Legislators have a responsibility to maximize that opportunity.
If a glass factory can become a haz-mat company a century later, West Virginia can be competitive again.
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