Background:
In 2016, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania was selected as the location for Shell Pennsylvania Chemical’s new ethane-to-ethylene cracker plant, expected to open in 2020. An IHS Markit study from March 2017 estimates a $6B investment from Shell which will be leveraged into an additional $2.7-$3.7B from supporting efforts. The study also estimated that for each job created by the Shell facility, an additional 5-7 indirect jobs will be generated, touching many supply chains, particularly within the plastics industry. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania envisions itself attracting and supporting 4-5 ethane-to-ethylene cracker plants in the future. If true, this will drive much of the economic, environmental, and sustainability strategies throughout the Commonwealth.
The university students of today will soon become the stewards of our Commonwealth’s economy as well as its environmental condition and sustainability. It is therefore vital that they engage in development of both. When economic opportunities such as the Shell cracker arise, numerous questions follow. Penn State University students are uniquely situated to address these questions, whether they are related to economic development, oil and gas, supply chains, plastics, or other related fields of study.
This strategic partnership of Penn State University campuses throughout the Commonwealth will through this program serve businesses, industries, governments, and non-profit enterprises by answering research questions, providing events for their discussion and analysis, and through development of new programs which support and grow a sustainable oil and gas-supplied industry sector in Pennsylvania.
What you do:
Pose brief research questions related to the oil and gas industry and its related supply chains and economic development implications. Research questions will only be accepted from business and government email addresses. Please read our FAQ before submitting research questions.
What we do:
Answer them. Penn State students, under faculty advisement, will research your question and present you with an answer to the best of their ability. We encourage you to permit us to make the question and its answer public, but we respect the fact that some questions should be considered confidential. Penn State will arrange events in which publicly designated questions of great interest will be discussed and analyzed in an open forum.