When West Virginia Commerce Secretary Woody Thrasher spoke to the West Virginia Manufacturers Association’s Marcellus to Manufacturing Development Conference last week, he talked about the kinds of industries that have their toes in the water in the Mountain State — aerospace, automotive and manufacturing, for example. But:

“Quite frankly, all three things, even collectively, pale in comparison to the opportunities that this shale gas initiative provides,” he said. “It has struck me how incredibly enormous the potential is. It has struck me that it, in and of itself, can completely reinvigorate the state which I love so much.”

His words may be music to the ears of Mid-Ohio Valley residents who continue to wait for word on the long-delayed Braskem ethane cracker plant project. The official line almost a year ago was “Given the current energy scenarios, Braskem will continue to take a prudent, deliberative approach in the development of Project A.S.C.E.N.T.,” according to Braskem spokesman George Manahan. Very little has been heard since then.

A facility like the proposed cracker in Wood County would be an important part of the solution to one of the problems Thrasher pointed out, with extraction industries that have been billed as West Virginia’s economic saviors for more than a century.

“We don’t want to repeat the patterns that we did for the last 100 years,” he said, “where we take those raw materials — whether it’s coal or timber or oil and gas –and we send them somewhere else to be refined and processed and to add value to there.”

Thrasher touted the relationship between industry professionals and government officials as essential to the flourishing of the natural gas industry in the state. He and his boss, Gov. Jim Justice, should take as much of an interest in Project A.S.C.E.N.T. as former Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin and his commerce secretary Keith Burdette did, if they are to get the answers they need to keep that industry growing.