The fate of a massive new chemical plant owned by Exxon Mobil and Saudi Arabian Basic Industries Corp. will soon depend on elected officials in a sleepy Texas community.
The Houston Chronicle reports that the San Patricio County Commissioners Court and the Gregory-Portland School Board are expected to vote on tax incentives for the project amid opposition from some local residents.
Exxon Mobil and SABIC, who collaborated for years on projects in the Middle East, announced a joint effort to build a "world-scale steam cracker and derivative units" along the U.S. Gulf Coast last summer.
In the fall, the companies selected a 1,400-acre site near Gregory and Portland over competing candidates in Texas and Louisiana. Those cities lie across a bridge from the increasingly industrialized Corpus Christi, but proponents and critics alike acknowledged that the project would dramatically alter the local landscape.
The petrochemical giants said the plant would help meet growing demand for chemicals and expand SABIC's global footprint. Local leaders, meanwhile, touted the potential for thousands of new construction jobs, hundreds of permanent jobs at the plant and billions in new economic activity.
But an increasingly vocal opposition, the Chronicle reports, made their concerns about the project's size and environmental and safety risks — including its proximity to three local schools — known in recent weeks.
The city council of Portland last month passed a non-binding measure encouraging the companies to build in an alternative location, and a group called Portland Citizens United circulated an online petition that opposed the tax incentives. The effort garnered more than 2,500 signatures.
Supporters, however, dismissed those concerns and noted that the schools already lie near oil pipelines and railways. Gregory-Portland schools superintendent Paul Clore told the paper that an expanded Exxon Mobil plant near Houston "seems to coexist without conflict in that area."
"The hazards are always there," added San Patricio County Judge Terry Simpson. "You can't eliminate the potential that there's a disaster of some sort."
