Cracking Appalachia: A Political-Industrial Ecology Perspective

This paper presents a political-industrial ecology (PIE) analysis of a petrochemical ethane cracker plant located above the Marcellus Shale Basin near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The analysis is motivated by community concerns that the cracker is more than just a plant and that current regulatory practices render the broader petrochemical ecosystem within which the plant exists largely unknowable. By integrating theory and methods from urban political ecology and Vienna School social metabolism, I present a metabolic tour of the petrochemical ecosystem to better render it visible and to situate it within the evolving global petrochemical economy. Within Pennsylvania, the plant exists in an ecosystem of over 20,000 energy infrastructures whose exact numbers and locations are largely unknown due to regulatory practices and exemptions unique to the energy industry. Because of this infrastructure buildout, the Marcellus Shale Basin is now interconnected to the US Gulf Coast, Canada, and Europe, resulting in more globally integrated, separate markets for natural gas and petrochemicals. As reconceptualized through PIE, this paper demonstrates how metabolism, a resurgent concept within various social and engineering science disciplines, can be a method for advancing community-engaged research by simultaneously embedding industrial ecosystems within place and assessing their broader socioecological significance.