Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly isn’t waiting to see who might land a mystery company promising to build a $4 billion operation and bring 4,000 jobs with it.
She’s signed a $1 billion financial incentive package into law knowing that reports indicated the mystery firm was also supposedly considering Tulsa as a site.
No one in the Oklahoma Commerce Department nor at Tulsa City Hall has bothered to respond to OK Energy Today questions about the veracity of reports. But that didn’t stop Gov. Kelly from acting quickly after the Kansas legislature adopted the Attracting Powerful Economic Expansion Act, or APEX.
As the Kansas Reflector reported, APEX “looks to give Kansas the edge over competition in Oklahoma for the site of an unnamed company’s production plant.”
However, the Kansas City Star reported that the mystery company might be none other than Panasonic. The newspaper reported over the weekend that Panasonic has agreements to build batteries for electric vehicles including Tesla and Toyota. If that’s true and Kansas wins the race, the plant would reportedly be located outside the city of De Soto.
The Star also reported that it could not obtain comments from Oklahoma officials regarding the mystery developer.
For weeks, Kansas officials have been tight lipped, urging lawmakers and the public to trust them as they sought to commit more than $1 billion in incentives to lure a mystery company.
Republicans and Democrats alike have cited nondisclosure agreements as they’ve kept the name, industry and location of the project secret. Breach of those agreements, they say, would kill the state’s chances at competing with Oklahoma for the project.
Officials in Oklahoma are likewise silent about the nature of the project. But signs and sources now point to a new Panasonic battery plant that would make hundreds of thousands of batteries for electric vehicles.
Panasonic, which has agreements to build batteries to power electric vehicles for both Tesla and Toyota, would likely land outside of De Soto if Kansas wins the project. The Star’s Kevin Hardy and Katie Bernard have the latest.
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