Two Rural Texas Towns Debate Whether Exxon's Proposed Steam Cracker Plant Would Be Blessing or Curse
Mayor Celestino Zambrano eases his battered 17-year-old baby-blue pickup truck to the left side of the road on the very edge of Gregory’s city limits, a predominantly Hispanic, low-income town of fewer than 2,000 residents located just north of Corpus Christi. Zambrano, 67, stares at the naked black fields, usually planted with cotton or sorghum.
Growing up the son of migrant farm workers in Gregory, Zambrano picked cotton in these fields, sporting an oversize sombrero that protected him from the sun as he worked alongside his father, mother and seven brothers and sisters. Whenever he needed inspiration to keep studying as a boy — he was in school only about six months of the year because the family followed the harvest season, so he worked at a furious pace to ensure he could advance to the next grade — he would think of being out in the fields. Now he cannot stop studying this expanse.
The 1,400-acre tract is wedged between Gregory and Portland, just outside the city limits of both towns, in San Patricio County, on the bluff edge of the South Texas coast. The land has been owned by the same family for more than a century, but they’ve signed an agreement to sell the property to ExxonMobil Chemical, a subsidiary of the behemoth energy corporation, and Saudi Arabia Basic Industries Corporation, a massive chemical company partially owned by the royal family of Saudi Arabia.
Spurred by the glut of cheap natural gas on the market due to the gas-rich U.S. shale plays, the two companies, longtime partners in Saudi Arabia, want to turn this raw farmland into a new petrochemical plant with the world’s largest ethane steam cracker at its heart. Exxon is leading the effort, sending in its own people to represent the Gulf Coast Growth Ventures Plastics Project, the umbrella company created for the joint venture, in San Patricio County.
Read more: http://www.houstonpress.com/news/two-rural-texas-towns-debate-whether-exxons-proposed-steam-cracker-plant-would-be-blessing-or-curse-9253666