The false promise of fracking and local jobs

[Panich52]

Pennsylvania is one of the centers of dispute over fracking job numbers. In Pennsylvania, the job numbers initially used by the media to describe the economic impact of fracking were predictions from models developed by oil and gas industry affiliates. For example, a Marcellus Shale Coalition press release in 2010 claimed:

“The safe and steady development of clean-burning natural gas in Pennsylvania’s portion of the Marcellus Shale has the potential to create an additional 212,000 new jobs over the next 10 years on top of the thousands already being generated all across the Commonwealth.”

These job projections spurred enthusiasm for fracking in Pennsylvania and gave many people the impression that oil and gas industry employment would lead Pennsylvania quickly out of the recession. That didn’t happen.

Pennsylvania’s unemployment roughly tracked the national average throughout the state’s gas boom. While some counties benefited from the fracking build-up, which occurred during the “great recession,” the state economy didn’t perform appreciably better than the national economy.

Nationally, the oil and gas industry employs relatively few people compared to a sector like health care and social assistance, which employed over 16 million Americans in 2010. The drilling, extraction and support industries employed 569,000 people nationwide in 2012, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA).

More from FrackCheckWV:

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I cross-posted in Energy&Environment

[Sarcastica]

1. For the last two years I have been working on the environmental permitting of several pipelines from

Michigan to Pennsylvania and have shared hotels, bars and restaurants with lots of frackers. None are locals and the stories they tell of low pay and abuse is incredible. They make low wages, but think that they are doing well because they get per diem, as well as 20 to 30 mandatory hours of overtime each week. Work 6-7 days a week. Grown men sharing small hotel rooms. Some sleeping in shfits- one gets the bed while the other is away from the room on a 12 hour shift, and then they switch- just incredible.

Hotels are full and are filling with drugs and prostitution. We had several women on our crews and the drunk frackers could get pretty rough. Police had to be called many times for threats, fights and sexually aggressive behavior, that had it not been interrupted, would have been rape.

We had a saying. Pipeline trash makin' pipeline cash.

[Panich52]

3. This reply neefs its own rec

[Number9Dream]

5. Interesting that "none are locals"

Welcome to DU, Sarcastica.

[Curmudgeoness]

2. There are a couple of rental houses in my neighborhood,

and recently (the last few years), they have been rented to fracking crews. There are at least five cars at these houses, all of them with license plates from ND, OK, TX, etc. They will be here about a year, then move on. But they never get a PA plate for the vehicles, so the state isn't even getting money for that from these transients who are not so transient. One year is a long time to live in one place without residency. When I see vehicles at the drilling sites, there are none with PA plates....so no PA residents are being employed by these companies.

So, besides these workers coming from out of state, they are abusing our tax system here. I only can assume that they have to pay income taxes to PA and this city where they are living, but I don't know that.

Tell me again how wonderful this fracking industry is.

[Panich52]

4. They are 'freeloading' off PA residents

I don't think they pay income tax to PA but I'm not sure, either. But they 'freeload' in other ways, thanks to Corbett. If they got PA plates, they'd have to pay the increased PennDOT fees Corbett installed. Those are just part of the increased fees we pay to subsidize frackers. Fees were raised instead of making them pay to fix the damage to roads their vast truck traffic causes. Somehow I don't think they pay enough in sales taxes (or even gas taxes) to offset the fees.

[Sarcastica]

6. A more disturbing event, was just before I left eastern Ohio in December, the local school board was

negotiating with the local fracking operation over school start times. The one-lane, winding, mountain roads can't support big trucks and school buses at the same time, so the frackers were asking the schools to start school later in the day because fracking trucks were traveling the roads early in the morning and could not get around buses. I left before a decision was made.

I'm convinced that they do not hire locals because locals would never screw the environment, economy and social fabric of their own communities. They hire financially struggling outsiders who close their eyes when trucks are pumping waste brine into the local creeks....