Exxon Mobil seeks tax breaks for $8.6 billion Gulf Coast plastics plant
A major oil and gas company is evaluating the possibility of building an $8.6 billion plastics plant on the Texas Gulf Coast, and according to a report, environmentalists are already on edge.
In December, Exxon Mobil applied for property tax breaks for a new project under the state's Jobs, Energy, Technology, and Innovation Act (JETI), according to a public filing with the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts. Under Exxon Mobil's Coastal Plain Project, the company is proposing to construct a plant in the Calhoun County city of Point Comfort, about 110 miles southwest of Houston and across Lavaca Bay from Port Lavaca.
The plant is a steam cracking plant, which means hydrocarbons in natural gas will be cracked down into the ingredients used to make plastics at the facility. Exxon Mobil expects to generate 300 permanent and 300 contract jobs at the plant, and it is estimating more than $61 billion in operating revenues over the first 40 years of the plant's life. The company said that it's also considering other locations for this plant, including "several countries/locations in the Middle East and Asia as well as other locations in North America."
Details are sparse on the project. If the project is accepted, Exxon Mobil would look to start construction in 2026 with operations beginning around 2031.
But Point Comfort residents and environmentalists are reportedly worried about Exxon Mobil's plans. According to a report by the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP), more than 80 percent of plastics plants violated pollution limits between 2021 and '23. An EIP analysis of 70 plastics plants in in the U.S. in 2023 found that about 10 million pounds of nitrogen and 2 million pounds of phosphorus were discharged into rivers, lakes and screams.
Diane Wilson, who lives near Point Comfort and spoke to nonprofit news organization Grist about Exxon Mobil's plant, said she had spent years cleaning pollution from another local plant and is concerned about the waste that could be discharged from the proposed plant.
"We have been cleaning the piss out of [Cox Creek], and this is the very place where Exxon is going to try to put its plastics plant," Wilson told Grist. "You see this nightmare of another plant, trying to do the very same thing."
An Exxon Mobil spokesperson told Grist that the company is still in the early stages of evaluation, and echoing the application's language, is also considering other locations.