Welcome back to The Link-Up, your weekly rundown of our favorite stories from the past seven days in the oil and gas industry!
Oil & Gas 360
What better way to start than with a healthy dose of positivity?
The formations have helped Ohio’s shale gas industry lead the nation in growth for four consecutive years, according to the JobsOhio Shale Investment Report, compiled by Cleveland State University’s Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs. As many as 12,000 high-paying jobs in the state have directly resulted from this industry, and this figure exceeds 100,000 when indirect jobs such as welders, fabricators and logistical workers are included.
Heeeey, we employ welders and fabricators.
I just grabbed something that seemed relevant, but it's a dense piece packed with little nuggets like that, as well as examples contributing to that $70 billion number, so I'd encourage you to click through if you like feeling good.
Montana Standard
Protect your fluid as proprietary, nobody's happy. Have the Montana Board of Oil and Gas Conservation write rules implementing a 2017 law to require ingredient-level disclosure, and nobody's happy, in the latter case because months of notice aren't required. Moral of the story: nobody's ever happy, so do what you want.
Sun-Gazette
We ran down this one a little last week, but if you missed it, Pennsylvanians saved over $30 billion on energy costs between 2006 and 2016, thanks to increased natural gas production, an important stat given that 12.9 percent of residents live at or below the poverty line and spend roughly a quarter of their income on energy expenses. Yikes.
An estimated $44.5 billion in economic impact in PA is also thanks to the industry, a number that includes business growth and wages paid to those connected with production and transportation.
Washington Examiner
We've obviously shared stories before highlighting the fact that oil and gas are good for emissions, but this one had a really interesting tidbit thrown in: the U.S. is on track to hit the emission standards of the Paris Agreement, the Obama-era environmental pact between industrialized countries that President Trump withdrew from last year. So...if you were upset about that one, maybe don't be. You're welcome.
PennLive
You know, this thing where we turn opposition arguments against them? I'm here for it. In this case, we have a pipeline incident, a knee-jerk call for people to stop building them, and someone delivering some facts.
The Frasier Institute, a Canadian-based research organization, found in a recent study that pipelines are 4.5 times safer than other comparable modes of energy transportation.
What are other modes of energy transportation? I actually had to look it up but trains, mostly. And as we all know, nothing bad ever happens to those.
Post Independent
We talk a lot about the rising tide lifting all boats when it comes to the economic benefits of our industry, but unfortunately, that can go the other way as well. Guest columnist Jeff Cummings, who owns a crane and trucking companyy, is worried about the transportation industry in the state.
For many businesses across the state, the passage of the proposition would create significant uncertainty. Businesspeople fear and dislike uncertainty and as a result they hedge or defer making investments whether it be improvements to their existing facilities, replacement or purchase of new equipment, or even whether they add or cut jobs. In the case of the trucking industry and the 105,000 people that it employs in Colorado, the impact of a slowdown associated with the passage of the measure, would be felt by all of our companies and employees.
Thanks for reading, see you next week!
