Fracking Nonsense: The Job Myth of Gas Drilling

[xchrom]

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/01/09-6

Natural gas companies are trying to sell fracking as the solution to all of the economic ills ailing this country. Supposedly fracking can bring the economy out of its current stagnation by creating uncountable new jobs, without running up government deficits, and even save us from global warming in the process. So how come local residents and environmentalists oppose fracking? The short answer is that fracking does not create local jobs, it lowers property values, and pollutes the water we drink and the air we breathe.

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking for short, is drilling for gas buried more than a mile under ground in hard rock layers. In order to extract the gas, a toxic cocktail of chemicals is pumped deep into the ground to fracture the rock. In recent years, the state of Pennsylvania has embraced the fracking boom and more than 4,500 wells have been drilled there since 2007. The state of New York has taken a more prudent approach by implementing a moratorium until the environmental and economic effects have been evaluated. The New York Department of Environmental Conservation is currently seeking public comments on the issue (deadline January 11).

In an intensive lobbying campaign to influence a skeptical public’s opinions about fracking, the gas industry has commissioned a number of economic studies that find huge job gains from fracking. A recent study by the economic forecasting company IHS Global Insight Inc., paid for by the America’s Natural Gas Alliance, projects that fracking will create 1.1 million jobs in the United States by year 2020. However, a closer read of the study reveals that the analysis also projects that fracking will actually lead to widespread job losses in other sectors of the economy, and would result in slightly lower overall employment levels the following 10 years, compared to what it would be if fracking were restricted. In another study, commissioned by the Marcellus Shale Coalition, researchers with Penn State University estimated that gas drilling would support 216,000 jobs in Pennsylvania alone by 2015. The most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show employment in the oil and gas industry to be 4,144 in Pennsylvania.

Rather than trying to project what will happen in the future, one could look at what the employment impact has been from Pennsylvania’s love affair with fracking since 2007, using actual employment data readily available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

[Kolesar]

1. 4,144 -- that's all

Luzerne County has had a huge amount of Marcellus gas well development.

Google Luzerne Fracking if you want to get pissed.

[Dead_Parrot]

2. It will be 216,000 jobs...

6,000 drilling workers, and 210,000 PR consultants trying to convince you how great it is.