by Sean O'Leary | Jun 24, 2021 | Blog Posts, Petrochemicals & Plastics
Don’t look now, but it’s late-June – season of the summer solstice and the now annual announcement by PTTGC that, despite previous assurances, it must yet again delay a final investment decision on the proposed ethane cracker in Belmont County, Ohio. Recall that in...
by Eric de Place | Jun 15, 2021 | Blog Posts, Natural Gas
In response to Pittsburgh protests over fracking and petrochemical development in the region, Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald uttered a string of half-truths and factual distortions about the impacts of the industry. As a corrective to Fitzgerald and other...
by Ben Hunkler | Jun 15, 2021 | Blog Posts, Newsletter
ORVI Insider Vol. 18 June 15, 2021 What will our Ohio River look like in 10 years? To see the future of the Ohio Valley, ORVI Research Fellow Eric de Place writes, look to a place that is almost its antipode: the tropical...
by Eric de Place | Jun 14, 2021 | Blog Posts, Petrochemicals & Plastics
To see the future of the Ohio River you can look to a place that is almost its antipode: the tropical coastal waters of Sri Lanka. It’s there, some 9,000 miles away as the crow flies, that residents have recently discovered the scourge of pollution from the tiny resin...
by Ted Boettner | Jun 14, 2021 | Blog Posts, Orphaned Oil & Gas Wells, Repairing the Damage, Shared Prosperity and Clean Energy
In early April, we released a report outlining the benefits of plugging and cleaning up orphan and abandoned oil and gas wells in Appalachia. Since that time, there have been several bills introduced in Congress to address the issue. These include the Orphan Well...
by Eric Dixon | Jun 7, 2021 | Abandoned Mine Lands, Blog Posts, Repairing the Damage, Shared Prosperity and Clean Energy
This post is the second in a four-part series based on a recent ORVI report on abandoned mine land (AML) issues. Figures cited below can be found in the accompanying report. Abandoned coal mines have damaged thousands of acres of land, polluted hundreds of miles of...
by Ben Hunkler | Jun 1, 2021 | Blog Posts, Newsletter
ORVI Insider Vol. 17 May 25, 2021 Could a former coal town in Washington State provide a model for Appalachia’s energy transition? In 2011, Centralia, Washington was struggling to deal with a shuttered coal mine, the...
by Sean O'Leary | May 26, 2021 | Blog Posts, Shared Prosperity and Clean Energy
There was a time when the sight of rows of office workers hammering away at their Friden adding machines would have sent me into paroxysms of delight because I, the Victor Comptometer salesman, had a new and better “programmable calculator” that could kick the...
by Kathy Hipple and Anne Keller | May 25, 2021 | Blog Posts, Shared Prosperity and Clean Energy
As a recent article in Forbes noted, the ‘dam has broken’ in West Virginia for solar power. While solar energy comprises less than 0.2 percent of electricity production in the state today, the market for solar energy is marching forward. Despite not having a renewable...
by Sean O'Leary | May 18, 2021 | Blog Posts, Shared Prosperity and Clean Energy
At ORVI, we’ve documented the inability of the fossil fuel and petrochemical industries to serve as engines for job growth and prosperity in Appalachia. Although these findings may be greeted with doubt, disbelief, and sometimes anger, we find that, once the numbers...
