One of my duties at Summit Sales & Equipment is to monitor our Google Alerts. For those unfamiliar, you can tell Google to email you every time they crawl a new site for a specific search inquiry. Please do not use this knowledge (if it's new to you) to creep on people, I'm trusting you guys. We have a bunch of them set up: variations of our company name, of course, since we want to know if someone's saying something about us on the internet, as well as more general things like "fracking," "ohio oil and gas," and "marcellus shale."
This, of course, leads to me reading a ton of news articles about our industry. Sometimes, they're about those poor souls who misunderstand what we're doing and are mad about it. Sometimes, they're about all of the positives we offer the economy and our larger society. A ton of the time (probably close to half, actually) they're just about such-and-such retirement fund buying or selling shares of one of the major players.
As I'm sure many of you have seen, I'll often post these articles on our social media accounts, as it's our hope that we're able to engage you in some of the conversations within the energy sector, as opposed to constantly bombarding you with "buy stuff from us." Even though you should buy stuff from us, of course.
To continue that push, I'm starting what's going to be a regular feature on this blog, my favorite articles from the past week. Occasionally they'll be reruns of something from Facebook as an "in case you missed it," but in a lot of instances they'll be first-time shares, since we're on a semi-strict social post limit and aren't able to get to everything.
If you have thoughts on any of these articles, we'd love to hear from you, either in the comments here or in the comments to the social post where you came across this.
The Denver Post
As if ballot measures governing setbacks weren't enough of an issue, Colorado has suddenly become lawsuit happy as well. The legal climate risks pushing companies out of the state, to places like Wyoming, North Dakota, and Texas - who will then see the benefits of the massive economic impact (a staggering $31 billion in 2015) that oil and gas producers have brought to Colorado.
Steubenville Herald-Star
Rhonda Reda, the executive director of the Ohio Oil and Gas Energy Education Program, gave a presentation to the Jefferson County Educational Service Center’s administrators, in an attempt to fight the notion that the oil and gas industry is "boom and bust." Reda's argument is supported by statistics like industry jobs (14,400 in 2011, 199,000 now) and production (1.7 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 16 million barrels of crude oil from 1,897 shale wells in 2017) that show a consistent upward trend.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Colorado isn't the only state out there trying to suffocate everyone through the courts and the statehouse. Pennsylvania is proposing the highest permit fee in the nation, $12,500 per well, which the state says it needs to keep its oversight program from running out of money.
Yikes. There's an election in November, right?
Kallanish Energy
The estimate is based on lowered natural gas prices due to production, and breaks down as $25.3 billion for industrial users and $14.9 billion for residential users.
American Oil & Gas Reporter
We've obviously posted several stories touting our region's liquid natural gas production and the push to become a net energy exporter. That obviously has big implications domestically, but it also affects the influence that the United States can exert on other countries, particularly when it comes to the tug-of-war between Russia and the rest of Europe.
"It is not about security of supply. As the United States becomes an energy exporter, there is more to be said about the issue of security of demand. Where are our exports going to go?” U.S. demand is going to stay stable, whereas production is picking up. If the United States can achieve security of demand, it not only can improve the economy, but also can influence the world’s political direction."
The Washington Examiner
With complete honesty, and despite having known petroleum engineering majors in college, the tech side to oil and gas was the single biggest surprise upon my entry into the industry. Even away from the wells, here at Summit Sales, we have engineers, drafters and plenty of others with great heads to help get our piece of the puzzle completed correctly, and the testing and re-certification processes down in West Virginia are highly technical as well.
Here's a nice look at the science side to the industry, specifically as it's drawn a workforce with advanced degrees to western Pennsylvania.
Until next time,
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