Your Good News of the Day: “Over the coming decade, it’s very possible to realize 100,000 plus jobs,” he said.

As Shell Chemicals’ expanding steel metropolis on the banks of the Ohio River takes shape, attention is focusing more acutely on what comes next.

The next ethane cracker.

The next billion dollar project.

The “petrochemical Appalachian Renaissance.”

“Shell’s extraordinary — it’s a watershed event — but it’s one plant,” said Kenneth Humphreys, senior advisor at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy, whose entire job is to pave the way for more such developments in Appalachia.

“Over the coming decade, it’s very possible to realize 100,000 plus jobs,” he said.

That would mean several cracker plants like Shell’s converting ethane extracted from shale wells into materials used in chemical production; a cluster of factories that would take those materials and turn them into consumer products; and maybe an underground storage hub for natural gas liquids.