“Getting an exact count of how many people collect paychecks as a result of fracking, however, is more art than science”....sort if like Obamacare enrollees.
Around here, oil and gas produce primarily truck driving jobs and jobs laying pipes.
The wells are small shallow affairs that don’t require big crews.
Jobs are jobs.
Hmmm...think I'll take Fracking to boost the economy.
How many jobs does cheaper, US-sourced (versus foreign) energy create in all industries? Millions, I would imagine. There’s a reason we have plenty of jobs in Texas whereas places like Upstate New York are suffering.
Well, OK, the jobs won’t last forever, so let’s just not bother. And we can’t be sure we can count those jobs accurately so maybe we should wait until somebody from Harvard can make a more accurate model. And having this source of energy at lower cost than liquid petro fuels that require refining that pollutes the air and water, well, that’s no good for anything, the cheaper energy is, the more people use it and that creates global warming and greenhouse gases. And there’s that income inequality thing, you know, the roughnecks out in the fields earn so much more than the waitresses that pour coffee at the diners and restaurants that spring up around fracking-development areas. And those hotels and motels, they use low-skilled workers who don’t earn much. And at no time in America’s history did cheap energy benefit anyone except for big oil.
These and so many others are the same old bullshit arguments that have created our moronic energy policies of the past 50 years.
The company I work for is headquartered in Kansas...but we have done millions of dollars in work related to fracking.
Directly, we design water lines to get to the wells, and we design man camps for the workers....in North Dakota.
Indirectly, the North Dakota DOT is flush with money and we have done a lot of work for them, I have designed residential subdivisions near Williston,
and then there’s rail - facilities in TX to load sand on trains...facilities in ND to load oil on trains...and all kinds of stuff in between.
I doubt much of our work would be counted in these jobs numbers...but fracking has been huge for this little company a thousand miles away from the oil patch.
There are the drilling and fracking crews the mud crews, and whomever else has to get called in. There are restaurant workers and service people who work to accommodate the crews, and grocery store, variety store, and various entertainment and recreational workers who are enriched. There are fuel and gas companies, and companies that service the oilfield service industry, and then there is the wealth that comes from petroleum distribution and use.
There are revenues to the state, weighed against other revenues generated by employment and incomes that are funded or subsidized by tax dollars.
Modern civilization and economies run on energy, and the more abundant and the cheaper the energy, the more modern civilizations and economies can grow. Many jobs that might seem unrelated to fracking and the petroleum industry will go away when the industry goes away.
Every time someone fills up at the filling station, there are taxes collected that go towards building highways and infrastructure that contribute to economic growth. Fracking is good.
Better questions,"How much revenue does it generate?” and,And, BTW,"Where does that money get spent?”
“Compared to WHAT - Saudi Arabia?"
“It’s also a reminder that the energy boom won’t last forever.”
An American Oil Find That Holds More Than All of OPEC
Nov. 13, 2012
Drillers in Utah and Colorado are poking into a massive shale deposit trying to find a way to unlock oil reserves that are so vast they would swamp OPEC.
A recent report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office estimated that if half of the oil bound up in the rock of the Green River Formation could be recovered it would be “equal to the entire world’s proven oil reserves.”
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/american-oil-find-holds-oil-opec/story?id=17536852
Clare Foran
Clare Foran is an energy reporter at National Journal. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic Cities, Philadelphia City Paper and NPR's science and technology blog, All Tech Considered. Clare is originally from Buffalo, N.Y., and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a B.A. in History.
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Clare Foran. Clare Foran is a staff writer at National Journal
How to Design a City for Women Urban Wonk · How to Design a City for Women.
A heck of a lot more than not fracking.
