Tom Shepstone
Natural Gas NOW   

Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale Success is one terrific story. It’s responsible for a whole new economic sector in the Commonwealth and WBRE/WYOU has covered it all in one short program.  

Fracking can be controversial, but it shouldn’t be given its record and its promise. Fortunately, there is more and more evidence facts are now overwhelming the emotion; the recent Holko-Steingraber debate in Binghamton offering a good example. Now, WBRE/WYOU television has done an outstanding Newsmakers segment that succinctly addresses just about every aspect of the natural gas industry, demonstrating Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale success is no anomaly but, rather, a foundation for the future. It’s not only a must watch show, but also enjoyable.

Marcellus Shale Success Is Unlocking Economic Growth

The program was hosted by WBRE Senior Producer Jayne Ann Bugda and PA Live Host Dave Kuharchik and promoted as “a closer look at the Natural Gas Drilling Industry in Northeastern and Central Pennsylvania.” It lived up to its billing as Bugda and Kuharchik were joined by John Augustine, Community Outreach Manager for the Marcellus Shale Coalition; Mark Volk, President of Lackawanna College and Brian Oram, a geologist and owner of B.F. Environmental Consultants.  This panel of experts addressed, in a very short time most of the major questions and concerns surrounding natural gas drilling and fracking, including health, safety, jobs and the benefits of natural gas.

The show was taped in three segments that follow, with the panelists making one salient point after another. Watch the whole thing and check out some of the key points that were made.

When you assemble a panel this diverse and ask the right questions, it’s rather amazing how much information can be conveyed in a one-half hour program. Here are some of the key takeaways from Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale success story as I heard them:

John Augustine, Marcellus Shale Coalition

• The average salary in the Marcellus Shale industry is over $80,000 annually.
• Gas companies developing the Marcellus Shale play produced enough energy last year to heat 35 million homes.
• The US has the lowest CO2 emissions in two decades due in large part to conversions of power plants to natural gas.
• Electricity generated at power plants using natural gas requires much less water use than almost any other method.
• The natural gas industry has paid out $400 million in impact fees over the last two years, fees that go to every single community in the Commonwealth.
• More than half of US homes are heated with natural gas and the ethane produced from natural gas is the stock material for hundreds of products.

Mark Volk, Lackawanna College

• New York City’s program to encourage natural gas conversions has given it some of the cleanest air among all major US cities.
• The natural gas industry is “exceptionally safety conscious” as Lackawanna College has learned from its own experience with the industry.
• The economic benefits of natural gas don’t end at the well pad but circulate throughout the economy.
• The Lackawanna College School of Petroleum & Natural Gas is placing some 90% of its students in jobs starting between $50,000 to $60,000/year.
• Inexpensive natural gas availability is now creating new opportunities for manufacturing in the region.

Brian Oram, B.F. Environmental Consultants, Inc.

• Lit his first water tap on fire in 1989 in Susquehanna County, almost two decades before any gas drilling took place there.
• Part of the Marcellus Shale success story is the slower decline rates in production of wells that should produce for 30-40 years.
• Pennsylvania now has a very strong baseline water testing program and even STRONGER regulatory program overall.
• Early issues with casing have resulted in much stricter regulations that are working well to address methane migration issues.

The program also addresses the opportunities that will be created by developing Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) infrastructure and many other facets of the industry and what it means for the people of Pennsylvania. Watch it and learn how the Marcellus Shale success offers a model for what can happen in California, Michigan, North Carolina, Virginia and Europe if it’s replicated.