Royalty tax withholding proposal
Royalty tax withholding proposal gets low marks from gas leaseholders’ group
A state proposal to have gas drillers automatically withhold state taxes from lease and royalty payments is drawing criticism from landowners who say they already struggle to ensure they are receiving proper payment for their gas rights.
The state chapter of the National Association of Royalty Owners, which represents oil and gas leaseholders, said it was surprised by the provision included in an omnibus tax bill, Senate Bill 1541, introduced on May 31 and likely to pass with the budget sometime in the next week.
The Department of Revenue expects the measure to make collecting the 3.07 percent income tax on lease and royalty payments faster and more efficient, especially among out-of-state mineral rights owners. The tax rate will not change, but the state estimates automatic withholding will boost tax revenue from royalty payments by $5.3 million next year and by about $2 million in subsequent years.
The state collected $46.2 million in taxes from gas leases and royalties in 2010, the most recent year for which data is available.
The royalty owners’ group argues that royalty check records provided by drilling companies already often lack itemized details that would allow leaseholders to verify how much they are owed from each well and how much has been deducted for costs. The group has been pushing the state to require standardized documentation and protections.
“There are few checks and balances to make sure royalty owners are being paid accurately, timely or properly,” said Trevor Walczak, the vice president of NARO Pennsylvania. Given the current lack of transparent documentation, the withholding proposal is unpopular with the organization’s members, he said.
“We’re willing to pay our share, but we would like to know that we’re paying just our share,” state NARO President Jackie Root said.
Revenue Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Brassell said the state’s plan is meant to simplify tax collection for both landowners and the state.
“The department’s interest is ensuring that all the taxes owed the Commonwealth are reported and paid,” she said.
citizensvoice.com/news/royalty-tax-withholding-proposal-gets-low-marks-from-gas-leaseholders-group-1.1334434
By Laura Legere (Staff Writer)
llegere@timesshamrock.com
Published: June 25, 2012
Local companies drill into natural gas industry
Natural gas extraction helps enable a Scranton ammunition plant to aim for different business objectives.
General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems makes swivel elbow and drill-pipe connecting joints used at the region’s Marcellus Shale gas wells.
“They definitely are making up a meaningful part of our business at this point,” said Jeff Brunozzi, vice president of operations at General Dynamics, formerly Chamberlain Manufacturing Corp.
Sales of manufactured gas-development materials help companies in the area diversify and tap into the lucrative energy-development market.
“Drilling is here to stay, there is money to be made and the opportunity is definitely there,” said Teri Ooms, director of the Institute for Public Policy and Economic Development, a regional research and analysis agency. “It’s creating jobs and putting money back into the area.”
General Dynamics, which manufactures parts and casings for military projectiles, relied on Pentagon orders for 95 percent of its production in 2009, Brunozzi said. Today, he said, defense work makes up about 70 percent of the work at the plant, which employs 300 people.
“It’s a big deal to have a diversified business and not rely on a sole customer in the U.S. government,” Brunozzi said. “It helps stabilize employment levels.”
Employment has increased at Finch Technology in West Pittston because of gas-related business, managing partner Cliff Fay said.
Machinists and welders at Finch Technology make equipment to process soil and other materials coming out of wellheads, machinery to treat hydraulic fracturing wastewater and parts for staircases and augurs at drilling sites, Fay said.
The company has increased employment to 13 from four a year ago and gas-related work makes up 25 percent of Finch’s business, Fay said. The company also manufactures parts for industrial kilns and steam locomotives.
“We are trying to grow across a broad front and diversify,” Fay said. “We want to provide good, long-term jobs.”
Linde Corp., a Honesdale-based utility and heavy-construction contractor, has grown into a major industrial support player in the region’s gas industry.
Linde had no involvement in gas development in 2007, company spokesman Kevin Lynn said.
“Last year, 90 percent of our revenue was from Marcellus,” he said. “It has completely redefined our business.”
Linde and its partners produce two products used at gas wells. From its base of operations at the Carbondale rail yard, Linde and another company manufacture and ship “liquid mud,” a clay-based compound that helps seal gas wells and remove cuttings. Linde and another partner at the site produce and ship wooden mats used widely in the gas industry to stabilize wet ground at drilling sites for movement of heavy machinery.
Linde, which also lays pipe at gas wells and transports water to drilling sites, employs about a dozen people at its Carbondale operations. The company has experienced 25 percent average annual revenue growth over the last three years, Lynn said.
“If we can help other companies, some of that goodwill will trickle down to us,” Lynn said.
The trickle from gas development runs across many sectors, including transportation, engineering and business services, Ooms said.
“There’s multiple levels of impact,” Ooms said. “It’s huge.”
General Dynamics found an impact several years ago, even though it has been forging elbow joints since about 2003 and connector joints for more than a decade, Brunozzi said.
The elbow joints, which weigh from 30 pounds to 100 pounds, regulate the flow of high-pressure fracking fluids into wellheads, Brunozzi said. The tool joints form threaded couplings between 30-foot sections of oil- and gas-drilling pipes. Both products are sold to manufacturers of drilling materials.
General Dynamics located a buyer for the elbow joints about two years ago, Brunozzi said, and sales have grown steadily.
“We needed to go find the entry point and the entry point is in Texas to get to Northeastern Pennsylvania Marcellus Shale,” he said.
citizensvoice.com/news/local-companies-drill-into-natural-gas-industry-1.1334363
By James Haggerty (Staff Writer)
jhaggerty@timesshamrock.com
Published: June 25, 2012
Air quality concerns raised as gas compressor stations multiply
The number of natural gas compressor stations planned for Northeastern Pennsylvania is multiplying as companies lay more pipelines to carry Marcellus Shale gas to customers.
The state has issued or is considering 29 air quality permits for separate stations in the northeast region, all of them in Susquehanna, Wyoming and Luzerne counties, according to a tally by the Department of Environmental Protection. Nearly two dozen of the permits are for stations planned within a 15-mile radius of the Susquehanna County seat in Montrose.
DEP has issued 383 of the permits statewide since October 2005, according to the agency’s tally. Not all of the permitted stations have been built and some may never materialize.
The permits cover facilities related to gas production, including compressor stations and dehydration units that strip liquid from the gas and speed it up for transport through interstate pipelines.
Each station emits a mix of pollutants – volatile organic compounds (VOCs), nitrogen oxides (NOx), formaldehyde and greenhouse gasses – in varying amounts that are limited by the type of permit governing the site.
Residents concerned about the proliferating stations’ impact on air quality have brought basic questions to public hearings in the region that are sometimes held as the state considers issuing permits: How many compressor stations will be built here? What is the combined impact of all these new pollution sources? When, if ever, can the state say stop?
The state considers the cumulative effect of the compressors using an existing network of monitoring stations that measure the ambient air quality, mostly in urban areas, Mark Wejkszner, DEP’s regional air quality program manager, told an audience at a hearing this spring in Susquehanna County. The closest monitors are in Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, about 30 miles away.
Pollution levels above federal air quality standards measured at those stations would determine if the state issues fewer or stricter permits, he said, but “right now, we’re in compliance with all of them with a lot of leeway.”
Environmental groups have criticized the state in lawsuits, letters to federal regulators and in public comments on proposed permits and regulations arguing that DEP is not doing all it can under the law to limit the amount of pollution the oil and gas facilities are allowed to emit.
They say that the state’s current air quality monitoring network is inadequate to measure the impacts of gas drilling and infrastructure in rural areas far from the established monitors clustered in population centers and point out that it is too late now – years into the development of the gas-rich shale – to measure what the air was like before the wells, pipelines and compressors were built.
“DEP does not have a comprehensive monitoring program to monitor contaminants in the air throughout the shale play regions of the state,” PennFuture president George Jugovic Jr. said. “We’re not monitoring for VOCs in these rural areas. We’re not monitoring for toxics. Having already begun this development, baseline is not really a question anymore. Now the question is can we get monitoring to ensure there are no local or regional impacts as we move forward.”
Jugovic was the director of DEP’s southwest regional office prior to joining PennFuture last year. He testified at a state House Democratic Policy Committee hearing in February that his former regional office alone has permitted over 13,000 tons per year of NOx emissions from compressor stations. If each station emitted the maximum allowed by its permit, it would add up to about 10 percent of the NOx emissions from all sources of air pollution statewide.
Nitrogen oxides, which are commonly released in car exhaust and cigarette smoke and by burning fossil fuels, can contribute to respiratory problems and lung damage on their own as well as when they are combined with sunlight and volatile organic compounds to form smog.
Environmental groups also say the state is not using a tool frequently enough that would limit emissions by considering connected wells, pipelines and compressors owned by the same company and built near one another as one pollution source governed by one, stricter permit – a process called aggregation.
None of the oil and gas air pollution sources permitted in Northeastern Pennsylvania have been aggregated, a DEP spokeswoman said, but all of them have been evaluated to see if the aggregation rules apply.
“It’s like a cumulative impact assessment,” Jugovic said. “If you look at each pollution source individually, it never looks like a significant impact on the air or the water. But whenever you look at it more holistically, you start seeing a bigger potential impact, which may lead you to regulate it differently.”
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Study projects growth in shale-related employment
An IHS Global Insight study released Wednesday projects that shale gas-supported employment in Pennsylvania will grow 14 percent each year between 2010 and 2015, more than in any other unconventional gas producing state.
The study, which was funded by America’s Natural Gas Alliance, examines the economic impact of shale, coal bed methane and other unconventional gas development on a state-by-state basis, including states with few or no gas wells that benefit from the growing industry’s demand for supplies.
It estimates unconventional gas extraction nationwide will support nearly 1.5 million jobs in 2015, while drilling in Pennsylvania will support 111,000 jobs that year.
The study details the industry’s “dramatic impact on employment and economic growth” but offers a more modest projection of shale drilling’s impact on Pennsylvania jobs than similar studies commissioned by the industry.
A 2011 study funded by the Marcellus Shale Coalition and conducted by researchers affiliated with Penn State University found that the shale industry will support 216,000 jobs in 2015.
citizensvoice.com/news/drilling/study-projects-growth-in-shale-related-employment-1.1330142
Laura Legere
Published: June 15, 2012
US DOE testing for links between faults, groundwater pollution
Federal researchers are testing whether hydraulic fracturing fluids can travel thousands of feet via geologic faults into drinking water aquifers close to the surface, a US Department of Energy official said Friday.
A fault from the Marcellus Shale formation, which is thousands of feet below the surface, could provide “a quick pathway for fracking fluids to migrate upwards,” said Richard Hammack, a spokesman for the US Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory.
The experiment is being carried out at a site in Greene County in southwestern Pennsylvania where conventional shallow wells were drilled and long since capped, NETL said on its website. Drillers are now actively drilling in the county in the Marcellus Shale formation.
The study will provide regulators, landowners and the general public “an unbiased, science-based source of information which can guide decisions about shale gas development,” NETL said.
The study also will help the industry “develop better methods to monitor for undesired environmental changes” and develop technology or management practices to address the changes, NETL said.
Speaking at a congressional briefing in Washington, Hammack said faults “form a plane that allows fluids to move up through the frack.” Some faults can be easily seen and avoided, but Hammack said some faults are not easily detected and could extend from the Marcellus Shale formation into other formations close to the surface.
The testing “is taking place right now,” Hammack said. “It should be completed next week. Within a month, we will have the micro-seismic data that will show how high fracture fluids have migrated upwards” toward the surface.
He said that Pennsylvania has a long history of oil and natural gas production and thousands of wells were drilled before the state mandated drillers map their locations in 1921. There is a concern if these well bores penetrated faults they also could be a means for fracking fluids to travel to the surface, he said.
All of these “vulnerabilities” are present at the Greene County site where researchers can “examine and quantify” all of these factors, he said.
www.platts.com/RSSFeedDetailedNews/RSSFeed/NaturalGas/6370255
Washington (Platts)–8Jun2012
–Rodney White, rodney_white@platts.com –Edited by Keiron Greenhalgh, keiron_greenhalgh@platts.com
Pennsylvania County’s Dreams of Wealth Didn’t Work Out
www.businessweek.com/news/2012-06-07/pennsylvania-countys-dreams-of-wealth-didnt-work-out
By Roben Farzad on June 07, 2012
Four years ago, as the economy was entering a devastating recession, swaths of rural Pennsylvania were booming.
Energy companies were using hydraulic fracturing, better known as fracking, to tap the vast natural gas reserves of the Marcellus Shale underlying much of the Keystone State. In Wayne County, these corporations offered struggling farmers lucrative leases for mineral rights.
“Land here became a whole different asset class,” says Tim Meagher, a real-estate broker whose family settled in the area in the 1840s.
Today there is no drilling in Wayne County, Bloomberg Businessweek reports in its June 11 issue. The Delaware River Basin Commission, a regional regulatory agency, has declared a moratorium while it studies the environmental impact. Gas companies have invoked force majeure clauses to put their contracts with property owners on hold.
Investors who bought farmland are stuck, and farmers who expected to retire on gas royalties are back to eking out a living from agriculture.
Meanwhile, fracking opponents are brandishing the example of Wayne County as they fight shale energy exploration across the country.
The number of drilling permits issued in Pennsylvania soared from 122 in 2007 to 3,337 in 2011, according to the Marcellus Center for Outreach and Research at Penn State University. Much of the activity was concentrated in the western and central parts of the state, which have a history of energy exploration and geology conducive to gas production.
Fresh Land
As the price of gas climbed, drillers looking for fresh land started eyeing the verdant, rolling pastures of Wayne County in (26452MF) the northeastern part of the state.
Companies such as Hess, Chesapeake Energy (CHK) (CHK), and Cabot Oil & Gas (COG) (COG) dispatched “land men” to go door to door to persuade homeowners to sign mineral leases. Farmers were getting $250 to more than $3,000 an acre to allow drilling on their property, says Meagher. Land that sold for $2,000 to $3,000 an acre in 2004 was going for as much as $10,000 an acre by 2009. Meagher says he often got calls from prospective investors in Manhattan, Boston, and beyond. To encourage more, he put property ads in the New York Post, New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal.
“I wanted to get my clients here the highest possible bid,” he says.
By the summer of 2009, a joint venture of Hess and Newfield Exploration (NFX) (NFX) had secured leases for 80,000 acres with the Northern Wayne Property Owners Alliance, a group of 1,500 landowners formed to negotiate with the gas companies.
’People Here Struggle’ Read more
Pipeline company won’t pay for Dallas Twp. well testing
www.timesleader.com/stories/Pipeline-company-wont-pay-for-Dallas-Twp-well-testing,159997
SARAH HITE
June 6, 2012
Drilling operations resulted in drilling mud spills at sites in early May.
DALLAS TWP. – PVR Partners will not pay for water testing at sites where a contractor of the company spilled drilling mud within the township, supervisors announced Tuesday.
Jeffrey Malak, attorney for PVR Partners, formerly Chief Gathering LLC, stated in a letter the company would not provide water testing for property owners in the vicinity of two drilling mud spills that occurred near Kunkle-Alderson and Upper Demunds roads in early May.
Supervisor Bill Grant, who lives on Hildebrandt Road and plans to test his own water, said the township will provide interested residents with information about water testing.
Supervisor Liz Martin said she spoke to George Turner, a professional geologist, who estimated the tests required for the chemicals involved in the spills would cost between $450 and $500 per sample.
Martin said the boring for the pipeline should be done soon, and those kinds of issues are not likely to occur again.
Supervisors also addressed residents’ concerns about PVR Partners’ contractor working at the pipeline work site after hours.
Grant said he received one complaint and another official received three complaints about the pipeline contractor working beyond normal hours of operation last Sunday.
Malak wrote that the company’s work hours are 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. six days a week, but because of deadlines, some work during off-hours has been necessary.
Grant said he understands the company will be finishing up the work soon and will not be working out of normal operating hours again.
PVR Partners is in the process of building a 30-mile pipeline to flow natural gas from wells in Susquehanna County to the Transco pipeline, located near the Dallas School District campus.
The company will also build a gas metering facility off Hildebrandt Road.
DCNR to collect money from drillers who harvest gas under public streams
republicanherald.com/news/dcnr-to-collect-money-from-drillers-who-harvest-gas-under-public-streams-1.1324563
By Laura Legere (Staff Writer llegere@timesshamrock.com)
Published: June 4, 2012
Natural gas drillers have to sign leases and compensate the state if they plan to collect gas trapped deep beneath publicly owned streams and rivers, according to a policy developed recently by the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.
The policy applies to gas gathered from pads on neighboring properties – away from the streams and their banks – where wells are drilled vertically before turning and boring laterally underground.
Waterways in the commonwealth are considered publicly owned if they are, or have ever been, used for commercial trade or travel. The list and maps of the waterways compiled by DCNR include hundreds of streams throughout the state’s Marcellus Shale region.
Where the state owns the streambeds, it also owns the mineral rights beneath them.
DCNR spokeswoman Christina Novak said the state is developing a standard agreement for companies who either want to drill horizontal wellbores under streams or who will, through hydraulic fracturing, draw gas from rock formations deep under the waterways. Unlike standard lease agreements for drillers who operate in state forests, the leases will not address surface impacts because there won’t be any on state property, she said.
“This would just allow an operator to access underneath a navigable waterway from nearby but to compensate the commonwealth because it is the owner of the resource,” she said.
The agency alerted gas drillers in March that the state would begin seeking compensation through lease payments and royalties for gas removed under the waterways.
The issue emerged because the mineral rights beneath publicly owned waterways were either impeding natural gas development or drilling was taking place without the state being appropriately compensated, Novak said.
DCNR has not determined how many miles or acres of public waterways will be included in the leasing effort or how much Pennsylvania might make from current or future gas leases. It is also still exploring if it can collect money from any companies that might already have pulled gas from under the waterways.
DCNR has created an interactive map to help operators determine which streams are considered publicly owned, but the agency also cautions in a policy summary that the list of waterways is neither official nor final.
The list developed so far is based primarily on statutory declarations of navigable waterways from as early as the 18th century, but a declaration is not required for a waterway to be considered navigable and the state says it reserves the right to add or drop streams from the list.
Publicly owned waterways in the heart of Northeastern Pennsylvania’s shale region include the Susquehanna and Delaware rivers; Tunkhannock, Bowman and Mehoopany creeks in Susquehanna and Wyoming counties, and Wyalusing, Wysox, Wappasening, Sugar and Towanda creeks in Bradford County.
Washington County families sue over fracking, water testing
www.post-gazette.com/stories/local/marcellusshale/washington-county-families-sue-over-fracking-water-testing-637631/?p=0
By Don Hopey / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
May 26, 2012
Three Washington County families claim in a lawsuit that they face serious health problems, including a heightened risk of cancer, due to exposure to toxic spills, leaks and air pollutants from a Range Resources Marcellus Shale gas site.
The 182-page lawsuit, filed Friday in Washington County Common Pleas Court, alleges that Range and two commercial water testing laboratories, Microbac Laboratories Inc. and Test America, conspired to produce fraudulent test reports that misrepresented the families’ well water as good and contributed to their exposure to hazardous chemicals and a multitude of health problems.
Filed by attorneys John and Kendra Smith, the lawsuit seeks unspecified punitive damages and is based on information contained in hundreds of pages of water test reports and documents, many subpoenaed from Range and other defendants. In addition to Range, defendants named in the suit include 12 of the drilling company’s subcontractors or suppliers, two individuals and the two water testing laboratories. A jury trial is requested.
According to the lawsuit, Range Resources knew its shale gas development operation on the Yeager farm property on McAdams Road in Amwell had contaminated the groundwater with chemicals from a leaking drilling waste pit and a 3 million-gallon hydraulic fracturing fluid flowback impoundment as early as November 2010. But, the suit states, the company told the plaintiffs that tests showed their well water was safe to drink, shower and bathe in, cook with, and provide to farm animals and pets. Some of those animals were sickened, and some died.
The suit says the plaintiffs developed health problems that included nose bleeds, headaches and dizziness, skin rashes, ear infections, nausea, and numbness in extremities.
“It’s unfortunate that our clients had no choice but to file a civil action due to damage not only caused to their water and property, but to their health,” said Mr. Smith in a written response to a request for comment. “Had the [state Department of Environmental Protection] protected these people, it may have been a different outcome.”
Mr. Smith said the lawsuit is the first he knows of in Pennsylvania to allege that a Marcellus Shale gas drilling company didn’t provide complete and fully accurate water test results to residents and state regulators.
Range Resources spokesman Matt Pitzarella issued a statement saying the company cares about the quality of its operations and stands by testing that “has repeatedly proven that our operations have had no adverse impacts in this instance.” His statement went on to attack the motives of the law firm and attorneys representing the Amwell residents, and its tactics, which he characterized as “fear-mongering.”
“This isn’t about health and safety; it’s unfortunately about a lawyer hoping to pad his pockets, while frightening a lot of people along the way,” he said.
Mr. Smith said it’s easier to attack the messenger than to refute facts.
Range Resources has maintained for years that its Yeager operations, which include one “fracked” well and two drilled wells, condensate tanks, the flowback fluids impoundment and drill cuttings pit, have not contaminated groundwater.
The suit says full and complete test results, subpoenaed from Range but never revealed to residents near the Yeager well site, show that chemical contaminants similar to those found in the fracking flowback impoundment and the drill cuttings pit were also found in water samples from wells and springs.
Range showed or sent to the plaintiffs and the DEP less detailed test reports but, the lawsuit claims, omitted results for others, including several semi-volatile organic compounds that were present in the groundwater samples and the company’s impoundment and pit, and that showed the water was contaminated.
DEP spokesman Kevin Sunday declined to comment because the matter is in litigation.
Due to continuing health problems, three of the plaintiffs, Stacey Haney and her children have, on the advice of their doctor, moved out of their home on McAdams Road, about 1,500 feet from the Yeager flowback-water impoundment.
Toxicity testing of urine from all the Haney family members has measured higher than safe levels of toulene, benezene, arsenic, cobalt and cadmium. Benezene and arsenic are known carcinogens.
Plaintiffs Beth, John and Ashley Voyles, who live about 800 feet from the impoundment and drill site, and Loren Kiskadden and his mother, Grace Kiskadden, who live in separate homes about 3,100 feet from the Yeager impoundment, have had similar health problems and urine test results.
The filing alleges that in September 2011 Range provided incomplete drinking water test results from Test America to the DEP that omitted findings showing a high concentration of nitrate — which can cause cancer — plus fracking fluid, flowback water, uranium and silicon.
Mrs. Voyles sued the DEP in Commonwealth Court in May 2011, claiming the department wasn’t properly investigating odor and water complaints related to the Yeager impoundment. That case is pending.
Today both the Voyles and Haney properties are receiving replacement water supplied by Range.
But Range has denied Mr. Kiskadden’s request that it supply him with an alternative water source, based on the water test results that the company and the DEP said shows his well water was not contaminated by its drilling operations. He has appealed that determination by the DEP to the state Environmental Hearing Board.
The lawsuit also says Range used the Yeager drill cuttings pit to dispose of hazardous drilling waste from at least three other gas drilling sites in Washington County, and the pit leaked and contaminated groundwater.
In April 2010, DEP issued a notice of violation against Range for “failing to control/dispose of production fluids properly,” and a month later Range drained the pit, replaced the pit liner and excavated contaminated soil. Range has not been fined for that violation.
It’s the only violation DEP has issued to Range for its Yeager operations or to any of the defendants in the lawsuit, which alleges the defendants committed various violations of the Pennsylvania Clean Streams Law, the state Solid Waste Management Act, and the Hazardous Sites Cleanup Act.
Don Hopey: dhopey@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1983.
First Published May 26, 2012
Shale-gas development creates demand for environmental graduates
live.psu.edu/story/59790#nw69
Friday, May 18, 2012
The College of Agricultural Sciences' Environment and Natural Resources Institute recently held a Marcellus Shale Info-Fest for students.
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The Marcellus Shale natural gas play is having a significant impact on Pennsylvania’s economy, and Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences is helping to position students to benefit from associated employment opportunities.
Recently the college’s Environment and Natural Resources Institute held a Marcellus Shale Info-Fest for students in the College of Agricultural Sciences in environment-related majors to show them what the specialized industry has to offer in the way of jobs.
This year, in particular, there are many opportunities, according to James Ladlee, extension educator and director of special initiatives for the Marcellus Education and Training Center, which is a collaboration between Pennsylvania College of Technology in Williamsport and Penn State Extension.
“In 2011, roughly 1,900 Marcellus Shale wells were drilled, likely requiring more than 25,000 direct employees and nearly 45,000 indirect employees,” said Ladlee. “State data show that since 2008, core jobs related to shale-gas development have increased by nearly 17,000 just in Pennsylvania.”
Ladlee said College of Agricultural Sciences’ students often represent the strong work ethic, the interest in experiential learning and the creative problem-solving skills needed for the jobs in the shale-gas arena.
“They are among those who best understand the importance of using science-based information to create a better future,” he said. “All these skills are directly transferable to oil and gas exploration companies or businesses and government agencies that support or regulate gas development.”
The Marcellus Shale Info-Fest touched on a wide variety of jobs and careers related to environmental implications for shale development. Those jobs can be in the gas industry, government agencies, private firms and academia.
Shale gas is emerging as a significant economic driver in many places across the country, so students have many chances to get involved, Ladlee noted. It’s a relatively new industry to the East, so here the job opportunities are widely available.
“Although changes appear to be occurring, over the last several years the scale of shale-gas development in the northern tier of Pennsylvania and the southwestern part of the state was unprecedented,” Ladlee said. “Those areas have been hot spots. Thousands of jobs were created just in Pennsylvania, either directly related to drilling or indirectly related to the shale-gas industry.
Penn State College of Ag Sciences students are uniquely positioned to tackle all aspects of oil and gas development, Ladlee pointed out. Students with an education or background in environmental sciences, forestry, engineering, construction, geology, biology, agricultural law, energy business or information sciences are qualified.
“If a student wants to be on the front end of an industry or regulatory system that is growing and dynamic, there are opportunities,” he said. “Students can be a part of the foundation for a strong regulatory system or help to transform and create even better oil- and gas-management practices for industry from the inside.
“Students need to understand that there are opportunities. There are literally tens of thousands of jobs being created as a result of this particular energy development throughout Pennsylvania.”
Job and career information provided at the Marcellus Shale Info-Fest is posted online. Click here to watch a video and see resources for potential jobs related to shale gas development.