(Cracking the Code with Greg Kozera - Photo Illustration - MetroCreativeConnection)

Approaching the end of the year, it is a good time to look back at the current year.

We know what we think our values are and what is important. The real measure is how we actually spent our time and money. Who did we spend time with? Who didn’t we spend time with and deserved more of us? Who did we donate to? Did we take a family vacation? We can assess what we did, what we didn’t do and what want to change for 2026.

Lynnda and I do this with our annual Christmas letter. The letter is written for friends and family to let them know what we have been doing as a family. We talk about trips taken, friends and family we spent time with, other activities of interest and some inspiration. We add photos to better tell the story. Did we spend quality time as planned with people we care about most? This is important before planning and setting goals for the new year,

We do the same in business. At Shale Crescent USA, we look at where we have been, what we did and the results. Then we decide which events or activities to continue and which to eliminate.

For example, SelectUSA helped us reach over 100 companies this year with our region’s message. It gave us over 20 leads we shared with the states and now dialog with. At least five companies visited the region so far. One committed to Ohio. Their U.S. president moved here and is hiring people. Another manufacturer visited the region and has narrowed their search to two sites in West Virginia.

Shale Crescent is returning to SelectUSA in 2026. Our new double booth told the region’s story so well people stopped to look, allowing us to engage with them. We had two meeting areas so we didn’t need to take prospective companies away from the booth to meet.

Two SCUSA road trips to Europe and Canada set up by SelectUSA U.S. Commercial Services produced positive results and brought companies to the region to learn more. One company from the Netherlands is committed to the Shale Crescent region and working on a location. We will continue these road trips in various countries.

The World Petrochemical Conference in Houston gave us good results pre-pandemic. In recent years, not so much. We will likely not attend in 2026, spending our time and money in more productive ways.

This week we attended the annual Chemical Alliance Zone meeting in Charleston. After the business portion of the meeting CAZ President Kevin DeGregorio had four powerful industry speakers answer the question, “Why Chemical Companies Should Be Coming to West Virginia … World Class Opportunities and Real World Challenges.” The question everyone wanted an answer to was, “We have the Shell cracker; why aren’t other large projects coming to the Shale Crescent USA region?” Our region has been successful landing smaller chemical projects. Landing another, multibillion-dollar petrochemical plant has been elusive.

Shale Crescent USA President Nathan Lord was one of the four speakers. He talked about the energy and feedstock advantages of cost and security of supply in the region. The Shale Crescent region has the lowest-priced hydrocarbons in the industrialized world and is the only place in the world where a chemical company can build on top of their energy/feedstock and be in middle of their customers.

Rick Clay and David Houser of Worley and John Herbert of Dow were the other industry speakers. They confirmed the advantages Nathan discussed and added, raw materials are 70% of a company’s operating cost. This gives the Shale Crescent a clear advantage over the U.S. Gulf Coast. All agreed labor was a small percentage of product cost.

David and John said stable, low-cost energy/feedstock, although important, doesn’t guarantee a large-scale chemical project. They added that our region lost other crackers because we lack chemical infrastructure. The Gulf Coast has pipelines to transport volumes of chemicals and other chemical plants making many products. Companies like Dow are already vertically integrated on the Gulf Coast.

The U.S. oil and natural gas industry was born in the Shale Crescent USA region. The chemical industry followed because of energy and molecules from oil and natural gas. The first ethane cracker was built by Union Carbide in Clendenin, W.Va., in the 1920s. The chemical industry in the Kanawha Valley followed. The Gulf Coast was still farming. When the Shale Crescent region’s energy depleted in the 1970s, it lost a large part of the chemical industry. For over 50 years, the U.S. Gulf Coast has been the right place to build a chemical plant.

The Shale Revolution changed everything, giving the Shale Crescent the cheapest, most abundant natural gas and natural gas liquids in the industrialized world. It happened so quickly most companies weren’t aware of the change until a 2017 SCUSA/IHSMarkit Study was presented on the main stage at the 2018 World Petrochemical Conference in Houston. Many companies don’t like the risk of expanding into a “new” area outside the known quantities of the Gulf Coast. Executives recommending Gulf Coast expansions are safe. New information takes time for acceptance.

The speakers said our region needs to improve pipeline infrastructure to get a multibillion-dollar project. The good news is the Shale Crescent region is landing smaller projects ($50 million to $500 million) like TCL in New Martinsville, W.Va., and U.S. Methanol in Charleston. Others are coming. These projects can be built much quicker than a cracker and provide hundreds of good jobs. Existing chemical companies in the region are expanding. Some are quietly moving European chemical production to the SCUSA.

We need to grow our trained workforce. My friends at Bridge Valley Technical College told me their growth is flat. They are looking for students who want good jobs and to avoid the debt of four-year college.

We can all learn from our experiences in 2025 and make adjustments for a happy, healthy and successful 2026!

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Greg Kozera, gkozera@shalecrescentusa.com, is the director of marketing for Shale Crescent USA. He is a professional engineer with a masters in environmental engineering and over 40 years of experience in the energy industry. Greg is a leadership expert, high school soccer coach, professional speaker, author of four books and many published articles.