Environment & Energy

The Leaflet – Tri-State Summit Agrees to Shale Exploration

By Nathan Makla

Published October 22, 2015

Tri-State Summit Agrees to Shale Exploration

Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia have benefited from the Marcellus and Utica shale formations, which contain vast quantities of oil and gas. Recently, governors of these three states have proposed a new agreement to work together to best utilize the shale resources that flow beneath their states, forming a web of interstate commerce.

An agreement between the three states proposes four key areas where they will work together to develop natural gas: infrastructure, marketing, research, and workforce development. The agreement, which is a commitment to the partnership, was signed on Tuesday, October 13 in Morgantown by West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin (D), Ohio Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor (R), and Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf (D) at the inaugural Tri-State Shale Summit.

Taylor spoke at the summit, emphasizing collaboration between states could maximize their collective utilization of resources and increase corporate interest from companies worldwide. According to Taylor, some 13,863 jobs have been created by drilling in the Marcellus and Utica formations, and the U.S. Energy Information Administration reports Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia alone claim 85 percent of the increase in U.S. natural gas production since January 2012.

According to a recent study from Harvard Business School, “Unconventional gas and oil resources are perhaps the largest single opportunity to improve the trajectory of the U.S. economy, at a time when the prospects for the average American are weaker then we have experienced in generations.”

The study also mentioned that “unconventional drilling has contributed more than $43 billion to annual U.S. GDP, and added nearly 2.7 million American jobs. In Ohio specifically, $28 billion of investment have been added into its economy and thousands of new jobs have been created– reducing unemployment by approximately 66%.”

In a recent Somewhat Reasonable article, Steve Goreham, the executive director of the Climate Science Coalition of America, explains the production of oil and natural gas from shale is changing the world. Goreham states, “We are witnessing a modern energy miracle. For more than 30 years, U.S. crude oil production fell from 9.6 million barrels per day in 1970 to 5 million barrels per day in 2008. Oil production, an annual $200 billion industry, was in long-term decline. Industry experts proclaimed that we had reached ‘peak oil’ and that world oil output would soon fall. But beginning in 2008, U.S. production soared, again reaching 9.6 million barrels in June of this year, recovering all of a 30-year decline in just seven short years.”

Natural gas from the shale revolution provides a tremendous advantage for our nation. The shale industry will provide the United States with a competitive advantage for many years to come if state governments take advantage of these lucrative opportunities.

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The Leaflet – Tri-State Summit Agrees to Shale Exploration

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