Posts Tagged ‘gas fields’

BY STEVE McCONNELL (STAFF WRITER)
Published: June 28, 2010

With the boom in Marcellus Shale natural gas development throughout the region, area educational institutions are growing to keep up with work force demands.

New training, certification and degree programs are being created at local schools to ensure local job skills are tailored to white- and blue-collared job needs related to the natural gas drilling industry.

Already, Lackawanna College and Johnson College in Scranton, Keystone College in LaPlume and the Pennsylvania College of Technology in Williamsport represent the growing trend of educational institutions offering course work and the hands-on training needed to become employable in one of Pennsylvania’s growing industries.

And, college administrators agree the reason for the trend is simple: There’s a demand for it by both the industry and potential workers who want the training and the jobs that come with it.

An industry-financed study conducted by Penn State’s department of energy and mineral engineering, which offers an undergraduate degree in natural gas engineering, expected Marcellus Shale natural gas extraction efforts to create more than 200,000 jobs in the state and have an overall $18 billion economic impact by this year.

“Marcellus Shale is going to be big business,” said Christopher Kucharski, Lackawanna College spokesman. “Problem is there is just nobody trained to handle the positions they want filled.”

It appears a change is under way.

Larry Milliken, director of Lackawanna College’s energy program and a natural gas instructor, just finished guiding the first class of 18 students through its first year of study to earn an associate degree in natural gas technology.

Based at the college’s New Milford campus in the center of the action near gas fields in Susquehanna County, the program is preparing students for well tender jobs – a position that requires monitoring and maintaining natural gas wells during their lengthy production phase.

There is generally one well tender employed for every 20 to 40 natural gas wells, Mr. Milliken said, and the entry-level annual salary is $36,000. Sixteen students have paid internships with natural gas drilling companies this summer in western Pennsylvania, he added.

“The industry has been very supportive of wanting to get (our students) on board,” he said. The college also is hiring three additional instructors this year to accommodate the increase in students who have enrolled in the natural gas technology degree program for the 2010-11 school year.

At Lackawanna College’s new campus in Hawley, college administrators recently announced a new certificate course for fall centered on training accounting assistants, accounting clerks and administrative assistants specifically for the oil and gas industry.

Tracy Brundage, managing director of work force development at Pennsylvania College of Technology, said administrators decided to take the leap into offering natural gas drilling-related courses this year. The decision followed an in-house study that determined growing employment opportunities because of the prevalence of natural gas development under way in the region.

“The jobs are going to be around for a long time,” Ms. Brundage said. “We’re just getting started … to get our arms around what is happening … and how we need to respond.”

Pennsylvania College of Technology has just begun offering training and certification classes in welding specialized for the industry’s infrastructure and commercial driver’s license classes, and has tweaked some of its academic majors – including diesel and electrical technology – to include natural gas drilling-related coursework.

So far, about 350 students have enrolled in the non-degree programs.

The college plans to expand its offerings, perhaps to include training for natural gas well operators and emergency response technicians, Ms. Brundage said.

Keystone College, known for its focus on the liberal arts, is also jumping on board.

Robert Cook, Ph.D., the college’s environmental resource management program coordinator, said the college will be offering a handful of new courses early next year that include mapping underground natural resources tied specifically to natural gas.

The environmental resource management degree, a four-year Bachelor of Science, has had its “highest level of interest this year” in part because of the Marcellus Shale boom and an expectation that jobs will be available for graduates, Dr. Cook said. The degree, which includes environmental law courses, can also prepare a would-be environmental regulator, he added.

“It’s clear energy is going to be an important subject for decades,” said Dr. Cook, a professional geologist. “It’s thrilling to see our discipline become an important skill set.”

Keystone is also hiring a new instructor to teach undergraduate courses within a new natural gas and petroleum resource curriculum that is now under development.

Marie Allison, director of continuing education at Johnson College, said the college will be offering its first class in pipe welding next week tailored to techniques needed by the natural gas industry. The college also will offer a class for advanced welders to prepare for certification in a specific style of welding demanded by the industry.

The college’s welding program had been defunct since 2001, because of declining enrollment, but the multitude of pipes and fittings that will be laid by the industry in the coming years yields greater demand for skilled welders, she said.

“They need welders,” Ms. Allison said. “We want to give someone the fundamentals and give them the opportunity to find a job.”

Contact the writer: smcconnell@timesshamrock.com

View this article here.

Copyright:  The Scranton Times

An organization funded by the natural gas industry disputes the HBO film’s conclusions.

By Steve Mocarskysmocarsky@timesleader.com
Staff Writer

After Josh Fox was offered nearly $100,000 to lease his 20 acres in Wayne County to a gas company, he heard two different accounts – one, a story of easy money, the other a tale of horror.

The 37-year-old independent filmmaker set out to find the truth about natural gas drilling, and his conclusions can be seen in his documentary film “Gasland,” to air on HBO at 9 p.m. on Monday.

And while representatives of the gas industry call the film a piece of propaganda filled with exaggerations and inaccuracies, Fox stands by his work and says it’s the industry’s response that is propaganda.

In a phone interview Thursday afternoon, as he was getting ready for a special screening of the documentary at the HBO Theater in New York City that night, Fox said a land man with a gas company told him in 2008 that the company probably wouldn’t even drill on the land. But he heard from others that environmentally, gas drilling was “very polluting.”

“There was such a disparity between what was being said and what was being offered, I needed to see with my own eyes,” Fox said.

So, Fox set out for the village of Dimock in Susquehanna County to talk with folks whose well water was polluted by natural gas migration from leaking gas wells.

“It was completely a disaster area. There were Halliburton trucks swarming everywhere. Water was bubbling and fizzing; some you could light on fire. There was a feeling of regret and betrayal in the air,” Fox said.

Residents were unaware of the contamination until Norma Fiorentino’s water well exploded on Jan. 1, 2009, Fox said.

The state Department of Environmental Protection fined the drilling company and ordered the wells capped.

Fox visited 23 other states where natural gas drilling was taking place. He interviewed people whose health and quality of life were negatively impacted; scientists, one of whom warns of the dangers of drinking water infused with chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing (commonly called fracking), which releases the gas from the underground shale formations; and government officials on both sides of the issue.

One of the officials Fox interviewed was DEP Secretary John Hanger, who minimized the negative effects of fracking but refused to drink a glass of water from an affected well, according to a synopsis of the film on the HBO website.

On the same day as a special screening of the film in Montrose earlier this month, Energy in Depth – a gas-industry-funded organization, released an alert on its website entitled “Debunking Gasland,” pulling out numerous quotes from the movie and disputing them.

Energy In Depth claimed that Fox was “misstating the law” when he said that a 2005 energy bill exempted the oil and gas industry from the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Superfund law and other regulations. The industry is regulated under every single one of those laws, said Energy In Depth spokesman Chris Tucker.

The organization states that Fox was “flat-out making stuff up” when he said the Pinedale Anticline and Jonah gas fields of Wyoming are directly in the path of a 1,000-year-old migration corridor of pronghorn antelope, mule deer and sage grouse, each species of which is endangered.

Energy in Depth countered that three species of the pronghorn are endangered and none are found near the Pinedale Anticline, citing the Great Plains Nature Center; that only mule deer from New Mexico, noting that mule deer are so plentiful in Wyoming, there is a mule deer hunting season; and citing a U.S. Fish and Wildlife report stating that the sage grouse is not on the endangered list and there are “robust populations” of the bird in Wyoming.

Fox also blamed an algae bloom that killed fish and other aquatic life in Dunkard Creek in Washington County on natural gas development, Tucker said. But DEP reports show the bloom was caused by coal mine drainage.

The organization also cites a reference in the documentary to Colorado resident Lisa Bracken, who reported to environmental regulators occurrences of natural gas in the West Divide Creek, which she believed was related to natural gas drilling. “Fox blames methane occurrence in West Divide Creek, Colo., on natural gas development,” the release states.

Energy In Depth published links to reports on the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission website that showed the methane was naturally occurring. Tucker said those reports were available long before “Gasland” was released.

Theo Stein, communications director for the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, said a commission investigation revealed that the methane Bracken reported bubbling in her beaver ponds near the creek was naturally occurring swamp gas from rotting vegetation.

Stein confirmed, however, that about a quarter-mile upstream, some methane gas was still present from a gas migration into the creek from a leak in a well drilled in 2004 by EnCana Oil & Gas, the company that will begin drilling in Luzerne County next month. EnCana received the largest fine in Colorado’s history for allowing that leak to occur.

Tucker, who is a native of Kingston Township and has been closely following the development of the Marcellus Shale in Northeastern Pennsylvania, said the press release was addressing only Bracken’s claims in the documentary. He was unfamiliar with the incident involving EnCana and said the issue alert was not meant to be misleading.

Copyright: Times Leader