Marcellus/Utica Welder by Day, Prostitute by Night?
MDN told you about the outrageous comments by Sandra Steingraber (from Ithaca College) in her address to a group of “feminists” in Pittsburgh last week (see Steingraber: Only Jobs for Women in Fracking are Maid & Prostitute). The obviously sexist Steingraber said this about jobs for women in the shale industry: “The jobs for women are ‘hotel maid’ and ‘prostitute’.” So when we spotted an article about a female welding instructor at Zane State College in Cambridge, OH–and how she trains both men AND women for welding jobs in the oil and gas industry (jobs that after a year or so on the job fetch a salary of $150,000), we thought we would share it with you. And no–the female welding instructor and her students are not a prostitutes by night. The headline was just a shameless ploy to draw you in and encourage you to read the article about these gutsy women doing hard, physical work in what Steingraber calls a “man’s world”…
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We hate to rain on Belmont County, OH’s parade, but we have to point out their celebration over the announcement about a potential ethane cracker plant announced on Wednesday may be a bit premature (see 
As we told you Tuesday, Ohio is now squarely in the ethane cracker race (see 
The third shoe has now dropped. On Monday we told you that Schlumberger has cut an additional 11,000 jobs–20,000 total now gone–from the payroll (see 
It seems that unfortunately, Schlumberger’s second round of layoffs was an omen and indeed a predictor of things to come (see 
Yesterday Dominion, a huge natural gas and electric utility as well as a midstream company, announced plans to build the State of Virginia’s largest natural gas powered electric generating plant–in Greensville County, VA. (By the way, Dominion won the Award for Excellence in Corporate Social Responsibility at the Northeast Oil & Gas Awards on Wednesday in Pittsburgh. Well done!) The $1 billion project will produce 1,600 megawatts of electricity using combined-cycle technology–enough electricity to power 400,000 homes. Dominion will use Marcellus Shale gas to power the plant, provided by Williams’ Transco pipeline. The plant will also be fed by a second Marcellus Shale pipeline–Dominion’s own Atlantic Coast Pipeline, a $5 billion, 550-mile pipeline slated to run from West Virginia through Virginia and into to North Carolina (see 
This is not an easy story to write. It’s about employment in the Marcellus Shale industry–and about age discrimination. Until late last year, by all accounts the Marcellus Shale industry was, from a jobs perspective, going great guns. Yes, sometimes it was/is necessary to import workers from other states to handle specialized jobs. But increasingly the jobs have been going to local workers and not out-of-staters. Yesterday we received a heartfelt letter (below) from an MDN subscriber. This gentleman is a mechanical engineer with degrees from Penn State and Lafayette College. He has loads of experience in a variety of areas–engineering, contracting, even running a small business. He wants to get involved with the greatest industry on the planet–the Marcellus Shale energy industry. He can paper every room in his house with the number of resumes and job applications he’s filled out. He’s applied for everything from technician to field hand to roustabout (he’s physically fit). In the last five years that he’s been trying, he hasn’t been called for a single interview. Not one. He’s now 52 years old. We don’t like calling attention to stories like this one, but MDN doesn’t shy away from sharing the “bad news” about our beloved industry along with the overwhelming good news…
Three weeks ago MDN reported a Buffalo, NY-based company had successfully gotten all necessary permits to move forward with building a $615 million, 549 megawatt electrical generating plant near Moundsville, WV that will be powered by Marcellus Shale gas (see