DEP said benzene and another hazardous air pollutant could have been released during an explosion at Shell’s ethane cracker in Beaver County Wednesday afternoon.
A few years ago, Pennsylvania gave Shell the largest tax credit in state history to build its massive petrochemical plant in Beaver County. The company may already be thinking about selling the ethane cracker.
A report by the Ohio River Valley Institute found population, gross domestic product and employment declined since 2012, when the Shell ethane cracker was announced.
Former pipeline employees told investigators the company was underreporting spills of drilling mud during construction of a pipeline that feeds the company’s ethane cracker.
News outlet PublicSource reviewed hundreds of documents to build a timeline of malfunctions at the plant and found that "no one was really prepared for this on either side."