Speakers at Conference Say That Utica Shale Has Created Only 8,000 Jobs in Ohio
Is the Utica shale falling well short of the gaudy job-creation predictions made in the past? |
Shale drilling never produced as many jobs in Ohio as industry groups had earlier predicted, said several speakers at a Thursday shale conference in Wheeling, W. Va., organized by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
The number of jobs tied to drilling for natural gas and liquids in the Utica Shale in eastern Ohio is about 8,000, said Stephen Herzenberg, executive director of the Keystone Research Center in Harrisburg, Pa.
Shale drilling also created an estimated 23,000 jobs in Pennsylvania and another 6,000 jobs in West Virginia from 2005 to mid-2014, he said.
There were industry groups and studies that had predicted 200,000 new shale jobs in Ohio several years ago. Ohio State University in 2011 had predicted 20,000 new jobs.
Those numbers were way off and the number of jobs will be measured in the tens of thousands, not hundreds of thousands, Herzenberg said in a daylong teleconference at Wheeling Jesuit University.
"The employment impacts (from Utica Shale) are much more modest," said Dr. Mark Partridge, Swank chair in Rural Urban Policy at Ohio State University.Click here and continue reading.
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