Natural Gas Boosting Regional Economies

AreaDevelopment.com -- "Hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) and horizontal wells now make it possible to economically produce natural gas from low permeability shale rock, greatly increasing natural gas supplies while reducing prices. These shale rock formations are found primarily in Louisiana, New York, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Texas, and West Virginia. Their development is helping many “downstream” businesses grow and create jobs. For example, estimates of Pennsylvania job creation due to increased shale gas production since 2009 range from 44,000 to 72,000. In Bradford County, Pa., the 2009 unemployment rate of 10 percent has been halved because of Marcellus Shale gas development. New York’s economically depressed Southern Tier is also benefiting from gas field development in nearby Pennsylvania. Case in point: RB Robinson Contracting, Inc., a family construction business in Candor, N.Y., had eight full-time employees in 2009. Today, it provides full- and part-time work for 120 people. Ohio’s steel industry has also felt the economic impact of the revival of shale production. More than 400 workers in Youngstown are constructing a new $650 million steel mill for Vallourec & Mannesmann Holdings, Inc. It will annually produce a half million tons of seamless steel well tubing used in drilling and “fracking” natural gas wells. U.S. Steel is spending $95 million to expand and upgrade its tubular steel mill in Lorain, Ohio, and Timkin is spending $50 million on a similar project at its Canton mill." MP: The chart above shows the increase in mining jobs in Pennslyvania, which have almost doubled since 2004, due to the shale gas boom in the Marcellus region of the state.    HT: Energy Tomorrow