The U.S. and Japan recently announced a plan to establish the largest natural gas generation facility in the world in Portsmouth as part of a recent trade deal between the nations.
While information regarding the site is limited, the U.S. Department of Commerce released a fact sheet Feb. 17, including a few details about the coming facility. According to the fact sheet, the facility will be operated by SB Energy, a subsidiary of the Tokyo-based SoftBank Group, and will generate 9.2 gigawatts of power, the largest in the world.
“The announcement of this plan is the biggest news we've had since the 1950s as you can imagine,” Lisa Carver, executive director of the Portsmouth Area Chamber of Commerce, said. “We are a community of small manufacturers; our main industry is healthcare and government, those are our major employers, so this announcement is huge for us.”
The announcement marks a large-scale investment in the Southeast Ohio region, an area of the state that has been excluded from economic investment in the past.
According to Good Jobs First, a nonprofit national policy resource center, 88% of Opportunity Zone investment in Ohio between 2020 and 2023 went to five major cities, while rural and Appalachian Ohio received almost none of the investments.
“Southern Ohio, we feel kind of left out from major developments a lot of times in the rest of the state, because we're not connected to the rest of the state by an interstate,” Carver said.
Justin Clark, chairman of the Board of Directors for the Scioto County Development Corporation, discussed how the group was established to support investment.
“Our community has been working to restructure how we do economic development in light of some of the things that have gone on in the last couple of years,” Clark said. “The city and the county, locally, in conjunction with the Chamber of Commerce and some of the larger employers, have founded a nonprofit organization called the Scioto County Development Corporation.”
Clark said the nonprofit was established after noticing surrounding counties in Appalachian Ohio, such as Pickaway County, Jackson County and Lawrence County, have similar public and private partnership arrangements aimed to advance economic investment and increase jobs.
Clark is hopeful the Scioto County Development Corporation can help facilitate local conversations with developers and the community to discuss community impact, community needs, workforce needs and workforce pipeline systems.
Scioto County commissioners were not aware of the plan until the public announcement by the Trump administration.
“We were shocked by the announcement,” Carver said. “Our county commissioners did not even know when Trump announced this plan. No one in our community had heard about it. I believe everyone was surprised.”
U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick released a statement discussing the plan and detailing its purpose.
“First, in Ohio, together with Japan, we will develop the largest natural gas generation facility in history, generating 9.2 gigawatts of power,” Lutnick said in the statement. “We will strengthen grid reliability, expand baseload power and support American manufacturing with affordable energy.”
In addition to the Portsmouth gas facility, the U.S. is establishing a $2.1 billion deepwater crude oil export facility in the Gulf of Mexico and a $600 million high-pressure, high-temperature synthetic diamond grit facility in Georgia, according to the fact sheet.
Lutnick said Japan will be providing the capital to build all three of the sites. According to The Associated Press, the money is set to come from an October trade deal between Japan and the U.S. in which Japan pledged a $550 billion investment package.
The exact location of the site is currently unknown. However, the Department of Commerce said in a fact sheet it will be in the “vicinity of Portsmouth, Ohio,” and many in the local community are speculating the facility will be built at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, also known as PORTS, located in Pike County.
According to a previous report by The Post, the PORTS diffusion plant previously produced enriched uranium but is now seeing cleanup and new investment. Carver said PORTS could have been a pull factor for the government’s choice to build the site in Portsmouth.
With increasing investment in the Southeast Ohio region, such as data centers and fracking facilities, many local communities have expressed concern regarding environmental impact.
“We are hungry for jobs around here, but that does not mean we want to sacrifice our safety or sacrifice the environment either,” Carver said. “Again, I don't think any of us have complete details to know what kind of pollution that may be involved … I'm sure that will be in the discussion as we move forward, as more information comes out.”
Clark said the facility is expected to bring significant long-term and short-term jobs to the region.
With that impending influx of jobs, Carver said Portsmouth will have to tackle the housing issue, ensuring people have places to live. She said housing is a subject the city is addressing, but it is a top priority now that the facility is coming.
Investment talks between the U.S. and Japan are set to take place March 19, the AP reported.
