Mitt Romney will make a campaign stop later this week in North Huntingdon (Westmoreland County), PA. The “news” about that stop for MDN is not Romney’s visit, but the company he’s visiting—Horizontal Wireline Services. It’s news because it’s a shale services company that didn’t exist prior to 2010, but today employs over 100 people at starting salaries of $60,000-$80,000. The company was started with no government assistance, and financed by a private investor (the banks wouldn’t touch it).
The company’s 35 year-old founder, Joseph Sites, graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a degree in chemical engineering in 2000, but he left PA because of no job prospects. He returned in 2010 to found Horizontal Wireline which runs wires into gas and oil wells to help with extraction.
