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.

[yellowcanine]

1. As with slot machines, the economic impacts are complicated.

There is not much question that fracking has stimulated the economy in many parts of Pennsylvania. Besides the direct job creation because of the need for supporting services in the surveying and drilling process, fracking has put a lot of money in the pockets of landowners. Farmers have been able to pay off mortgages, buy new equipment, etc. That said, there are many negative impacts. In some areas rural roads are so beat up from the heavy truck traffic that it is hard to tell that some roads were ever paved. Yes the companies are supposed to rebuild them after the initial phase of drilling is complete but in the meantime it is creating a lot of hardship for rural drivers and for farmers. There are water issues - both the high demand for water and the disposal of waste water. Small waste water treatment plants have had their equipment ruined from processing fracking water. And it was the injection of brackish wast frack water which apparently caused small earthquakes in Ohio. There are many questions and few answers about impacts of water wells - particularly methane contamination. There are surface water runoff issues involving sediment, frack waste, etc. And of course the negative impacts affect everyone, not just the landowners and business people who are benefiting from the fracking. How will it all shake out is just guesswork at the moment. Part of the problem is that in many cases there have been few if any baseline studies done. Once drilling starts it is too late to do baseline studies. This is why New York and Maryland, unlike Pennsylvania, have opted for a go slower approach - to make sure those base line environmental impact studies get done. But not without a lot of criticism from the petroleum industry and their political apologists, of course.

[PETRUS]

2. Crazy, I was going to post this just now until I saw that you had. Rec. nt

[xchrom]

3. thanks for the rec -- that was nice. nt

[EC]

4. I guess you could say it creates jobs in

the contracting business, fixing all the damage from earthquakes.