PLANT

The plant would take years to build and require up to 6,000 construction workers. Once built, the plant would employ several hundred people.

It would be an ethane “cracker” plant, which takes a byproduct from natural-gas production and turns it into ethylene, an essential ingredient for making plastics and chemicals.

A similar plant is being built in western Pennsylvania by a subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell, with a projected cost of $6 billion.

The possibility of the Ohio project has been publicly known since April 2015, when PTT Global disclosed its interest and said it had selected a former power plant in Belmont County as its site. At that time, PTT Global said it was spending about $150 million on feasibility studies and would decide within 16 months whether to move forward with the development.

Since then, PTT Global has several times extended its timeline for a decision. In the meantime, Ohio economic-development leaders and the company have taken several incremental steps toward that decision.

Environmental groups have raised concerns that the plant would pollute the air and water. In response to Monday’s news, the Ohio chapter of the Sierra Club said in a statement that the plant “threatens to have disastrous consequences for our health and safety.”

State and local officials are working on a package of economicdevelopment incentives for the plant; the state already has spent $20 million on an environmental cleanup of the site.

Kasich gave no specifics about the dollar amount or type of incentives being considered, but he did speak in general about a desire to not overspend.

“Wisconsin, to get Foxconn, gave away the store,” the governor said, referencing the multistate competition last year to attract a factory planned by the Taiwanese electronics manufacturer. Ohio was one of the states competing.

“It is a semimeltdown in that state in regard to Foxconn.”

He said he told Foxconn executives that “we don’t give away the store.”