Economic Impact

Economic Impact | Industrywide Issues | Jobs

Everyone Wins – Not Just Landowners – When Marcellus Drilling Happens in a Community
July 4, 2011July 4, 2011

One of the favorite arguments used as a smokescreen by those opposed to Marcellus drilling is the classic class warfare argument. But it takes a lot of mental gymnastics to make it work in this case as the people who are supposedly the “fat cats” and the “lucky few winners of life’s lottery” are typically family farmers who have been scraping by for generations, just trying to hold on to the land they love. The fact that some of them “get rich” from gas drilling just doesn’t sit right with the elite city-dwellers. Kind of invokes images of the Beverly Hillbillies.

MDN has heard this “haves and have nots” class warfare argument in presentations from people like Cornell Professor Tony Ingraffea. It’s a disgusting, offensive and frankly bigoted argument, but there you go. It’s one of the favorites from anti-drillers.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette takes a new run at dressing up this pig of an argument with yet more lipstick:

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Economic Impact | Industrywide Issues

Shale Gas Industry, US Government Responds to NYT Articles Questioning Shale Gas Reserves
June 30, 2011June 30, 2011

The industry publication Natural Gas Intelligence (NGI) issued a press release yesterday summarizing the mounting opposition to the recent hit pieces published by the New York Times on the shale gas industry. The press release is an effort to get subscribers for NGI’s publications. Hey, MDN appreciates their efforts! However, the quotes in the piece from across the spectrum are an excellent roundup illustrating the truly misguided effort by the NYT to smear the shale gas industry. So MDN is running the NGI press release in full below.

In an article full of great quotes, here is MDN’s favorite: “Professional journalists are wondering why a newspaper industry leader would damage its credibility by substituting advocacy for accuracy, in what can only be described as a travesty of journalistic principles.”

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Economic Impact | Industrywide Issues | New York | Statewide NY

New York Politicians Seek to Make Political Hay from NYT Articles on Natural Gas Reserves Estimates
June 29, 2011June 29, 2011

Predictably, now that the New York Times has delivered a journalistic drive-by hit piece claiming that energy companies are using false data and accounting trickery to overstate shale gas reserves, NYT sycophant leftist politicians in New York State are making political hay from it. For opportunistic politicians, it’s all about the seriousness of the allegation, never mind that the allegation is totally false.

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Economic Impact | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Public Opinion

New York Times: Nightmare on Shale Gas Street
June 28, 2011June 28, 2011

For many, the New York Times is the paragon of virtue, the ultimate source, arbiter of truth, beacon of light in a world of darkness. And of course, everything you read in the Gray Lady is the honest truth—for real!

Sometimes I sigh and wish I too could live inside the liberal bubble and ignore reality and believe everything in the NYT—life would be so much simpler that way. But alas, I’m one of those few who don’t automatically believe what I read. In fact, a lot of what I read I would consider fiction, rather than fact.

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Economic Impact | Industrywide Issues | Jobs | Pennsylvania | Statewide PA

Pittsburgh Set to Surpass Pre-Recession Employment Levels Due to Marcellus Shale Drilling Jobs
June 21, 2011June 21, 2011

Pittsburgh and other energy-related regions of the U.S. are bouncing back from the recession faster than other parts of the country. For Pittsburgh, it’s due in no small part to Marcellus Shale drilling. According to a new report just released, Pittsburgh’s employment numbers will pull even and surpass pre-recession levels by early 2012.

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Economic Impact | Industrywide Issues | Marshall County | West Virginia

Marshall County, WV Feeling the Positive Effects of Marcellus Gas Drilling
June 13, 2011June 13, 2011

Marshall County, West Virginia is feeling the positive effects of Marcellus Shale drilling as money paid to landowners and workers is spent and creates economic ripples through the local economy.

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Economic Impact | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | New York | Regulation | Statewide NY

New York Will See $11.4 Billion in New Investment, $1.4 Billion in New Tax Revenue, and 18K New Jobs if the Fracking Moratorium is Lifted
June 8, 2011June 8, 2011

New York State will see a huge $11.4 billion in economic investment by 2020, with state and local governments receiving $1.4 billion in new tax revenues, as well as 15,000-18,000 new jobs created if the current moratorium preventing Marcellus Shale drilling is lifted, according to a report released yesterday by the award-winning think tank Manhattan Institute for Policy Research.

The report, titled “The Economic Opportunities of Shale Energy Development,” projects an additional (and astonishing) 75,000-90,000 jobs would be created if the Utica Shale is tapped. (The Utica Shale requires horizontal hydraulic fracturing as does the Marcellus Shale.)

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Economic Impact | Energy Companies | Industrywide Issues | Jobs | Shell

Shell Commits to Building a Billion Dollar Chemical Plant in the Marcellus Region of U.S.
June 7, 2011June 7, 2011

Royal Dutch Shell, one of the largest energy companies in the world, announced on Monday that it will build a “world-scale” chemical plant in the Marcellus region of the United States. The chemical plant is called a “cracker” and typically costs more than a billion dollars to construct. Its construction would provide thousands of both short-term construction and long-term operations jobs. Both West Virginia and Pennsylvania have been actively courting chemical companies to build one or more cracker plants in their states (see this MDN story).

The cracker plant would take advantage of one of the byproducts of Marcellus Shale drilling—ethane—which is converted to the hydrocarbon ethylene. Ethylene is a “feedstock” (or raw material) used to make plastics, including polyethylene, the most manufactured and widely-used plastic in the world (see MDN’s brief petrochemical primer here).

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Economic Impact | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues

Shale Gas Technologies Now Being Used to Unlock Vast Quantities of Shale Oil
June 2, 2011June 2, 2011

An article in the Toronto Globe and Mail highlights the promising future for shale oil—that’s right, shale oil. The technologies that drillers have used to unlock vast amounts of natural gas from shale are now starting to be used to unlock vast amounts of oil.

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Economic Impact | Industrywide Issues | Jobs | Pennsylvania | Statewide PA

PA Hires 48,000 People in Past 12 Months to Work in Marcellus Shale Drilling Industry
May 30, 2011May 30, 2011

The Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry has just released new employment data and with it, the number of people hired in the past 12 months to work in the Marcellus Shale drilling industry. And the numbers are startling:

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Economic Impact | Industrywide Issues | Jobs | Statewide WV | West Virginia

WV Natural Gas Industry Already Employs 35K People with Average Salaries of $60K
May 26, 2011May 26, 2011

The Independent Oil and Gas Association of West Virginia has just kicked off a new advertising campaign to educate the public to the benefits of natural gas drilling in the state.

Read More “WV Natural Gas Industry Already Employs 35K People with Average Salaries of $60K”
Economic Impact | Energy Companies | Industrywide Issues | Range Resources Corp

The Economics of Converting Vehicles to Natural Gas
May 16, 2011May 16, 2011

At a small meeting last week at Washington & Jefferson College (in Washington, PA, near Pittsburgh), representatives from Columbia Gas of Pennsylvania, Range Resources and Pittsburgh Regional Clean Cities presented to several area fleet operators. They were making the case for the economics of switching their cars and trucks to compressed natural gas, or CNG. Widespread use of natural gas to power vehicles will likely start with “fleets” of vehicles—taxis, trucks, buses—and the early adopters will likely be schools, government and larger companies.

We get the following figures on conversion costs from Dan Cotherman, business development manager for driller Range Resources:

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Economic Impact | Industrywide Issues | Jobs | Pennsylvania | Statewide PA | Statewide WV | West Virginia

Marcellus Drillers Attempting to Woo Chemical Companies to Build Plants in the Marcellus
May 5, 2011May 23, 2011

Marcellus Shale drillers and regional economic development agencies are trying to interest chemical companies in locating to southwest PA and northern WV by building “cracking plants” that would convert some of the compounds from Marcellus drilling into the raw material used to manufacture plastics and other chemical products. Just one such plant would mean a $1 billion investment, creating thousands of short-term jobs to build the plant, and hundreds of permanent jobs to staff it once built.

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Bradford County | Economic Impact | Industrywide Issues | Jobs | Pennsylvania | Statewide PA

New Research Details the Positive Economic Impacts from Marcellus Shale Drilling in PA
April 25, 2011April 25, 2011

Some empirical data on the positive economic impacts of Marcellus Shale gas drilling in Pennsylvania:

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Economic Impact | Industrywide Issues

How Shale Gas is Leading to Lower Prices on Plastics
April 6, 2011April 6, 2011

Not only is the discovery and abundant supply of Marcellus Shale gas good for consumers in the form of lower energy prices, it’s also good for consumers in the form of lower prices for products made from plastic. An article in Plastics News highlights the importance of the shale gas discovery in the United States and its impact on the production and availability of plastics.

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Economic Impact | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Statewide PA

Proposed Bill Allows PA Universities to Keep Marcellus Drilling Revenues for Building Projects
April 6, 2011April 6, 2011

It’s not a done deal yet, but Pennsylvania may soon allow its state-owned universities to have Marcellus Shale drilling on their property—and keep the money from it.

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