Congressman Bill Johnson Again Expresses Optimism Towards Belmont County Cracker Plant Being Built
From The Times Leader:
It was a full house at the JobsOhio’s public board meeting on Monday afternoon at the Ohio Mine Safety Training Center in Harrison County.
JobsOhio is a private nonprofit corporation designed to drive job creation and new capital investment in Ohio through business attraction and retention and expansion efforts. Numerous elected officials, department heads and seven of the nine JobsOhio board members were present at the meeting.
Bob Smith, chairman of the board, began the meeting and thanked all who were in attendance. He then introduced Congressman Bill Johnson.
Johnson, R-Ohio, discussed the actions of President Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War in reference to Ohio’s leadership skills.
“So you’ve got the secretary of treasury, the commander in chief of the Army, and the two most prolific fighter generals that Lincoln could find, all from Ohio. You think about where we might have been, as a nation, if Lincoln had not surrounded himself with that group of Ohio leadership … ,” Johnson said. “The partnership that exists between APEG and JobsOhio, I can’t think of another state that is doing it the way we’re doing it here in Ohio and it is paying big big dividends.”
Since January 2011 through this year, more than $70 billion of investment has come in to this region, he said. He added that 32 percent of the nation’s natural gas demand comes from this region and by 2050 it is estimated to be as much as 50 percent.
“There is such a wealth of resources right here in our region. … I think there’s a lot of reasons to be optimistic about where we are, pride in where we’ve come from, and a lot of excitement about where we’re going,” he said.
He said proposed the PTT Global Chemical-Dealim ethane cracker plant is in the final financing phase and that the developers have invested around $70 million in pre-construction and site preparation work.
“Companies don’t put that kind of money into a no-go operation, folks. I’m telling you that we’re heading in the right direction,” he said.Click here to read more.