The economic potential of natural gas development across the region knows no limits and has yet to be fully realized. With just a few years of development under our belts in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, and now with Ohio beginning development of the Utica Shale, the Appalachian Basin is poised to become a leader of onshore oil and gas development for years to come.
Coupled with this development, comes hundreds-of-thousands of good-paying jobs, tens-of-billions in economic activity and substantial revenue for federal, state and local governments. And that’s just from developing and harvesting the natural gas and oil for the shale thousands of feet beneath our feet. When you add in the impacts domestic natural gas development has on the chemical manufacturing industry, only then does the true scope of this impact come into focus.
A recent economic analysis of natural gas development in Pennsylvania completed in July 2011 by researchers at Penn State University concluded the following:
- During 2010, the Pennsylvania Marcellus Shale natural gas industry triggered $11.2 billion in economic activity, generated $1.1 billion in state and local taxes, and supported nearly 140,000 jobs.
- The Pennsylvania Marcellus industry is projected to generate more than $12.8 billion in economic activity in 2011, leading to more than $1.2 billion in state and local taxes and supporting more than 156,000 jobs.
- As a result of Pennsylvania Marcellus production, residential electricity and natural gas bills across the Commonwealth are $245.1 million lower [$217.4 million from lower natural gas bills and another $27.7 million from lower electricity bills].
- In 2010 alone, natural gas companies paid over $1.6 billion in lease and bonus payments to Pennsylvania landowners.
- By 2015, Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale could produce more than 12 billion cubic feet per day, second only to Texas in natural gas production.
- Marcellus Shale natural gas production could reach 17 billion cubic feet per day in 2020, potentially allowing the Marcellus to become the single largest producing gas field in the United States, if real natural gas prices do not fall significantly.