Hundreds of years of having our resources extracted, the population exploited, and our state defiled, and West Virginian’s still have learned nothing:
As West Virginia’s unemployment rate jumps to 6.9 percent, some Mountain State residents believe a hiring boom in the oil and natural gas drilling industry is just around the corner.
However, information from WorkForce West Virginia shows the Marcellus and Utica shale drilling industry has not created much direct employment over the past two years.
“We’ve not seen much change in employment in the oil and gas industry over the past year. Employment in oil and gas in 2010 was 2,244, dropping slightly to 2,179 in 2011,” said WorkForce spokeswoman Courtney Sisk.
The presence of the drilling industry does lead to increased employment in certain areas, as restaurant and hotel owners report being very busy these days because of drillers working in the area. There are also companies that supply materials to the drilling industry that may hire more employees to meet these needs, while retailers may also see an upswing in some business because of mineral owners receiving spending money from lease and royalty checks.
However, the WorkForce statistics show that the number of West Virginia residents working directly for gas and oil drillers has not increased over the past two years, despite a continued upswing in drilling and fracking.
Authorities say a gas drilling operation in the Sardis, W.Va. area hit an aquifer and inadvertently re-pressurized a handful of old water wells Wednesday, creating a backyard geyser at least 10 feet high and several smaller gushers.
The house with the 10- to 12-foot geyser was flooded, said Paul Bump, chief of the Harrison County Bureau of Emergency Services. At three or four other homes, the water flooded yards and garages.
“It looked like Old Faithful moved out East,” said Dale Sturm, a 63-year-old retired carpenter who noticed his patio was wet shortly before 7 a.m.
Sturm said he went outside to investigate and found water “blowing up under my car” from a crack that had opened in the cement about a foot from the garage door.
The residents’ wells have long been disconnected from the indoor plumbing because the homes are all on a public water supply and don’t use them for drinking.
We’re lucky they were all on what we around here call “city water,” but does anyone really believe that fracking is not polluting our water resources?
cathyx
And I’ll bet tourism is down because of it too.
Litlebritdifrnt
You gotta see this John, LGF caught Pam Gellar drunk blogging at 8.30 AM and it is brutal
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/40475_A_Pamela_Geller_Classic-_How_Else_Culd_an_Unqualfied_Bitter_Ameria_Hater_Hold_the_Eat_in_Obama_Office/comments/#ctop
beltane
@Litlebritdifrnt: Many years ago there was a troll on DKos who appeared to use trolling as a way to work on his English skills. I thought he was a Chinese student but maybe he was really Pam Geller.
Lee
The more I read about fracking the less I think it is common for it to pollute the water supply. The reason is because fracking occurs at a much lower depth than typically water is found (exceptions happen of course).
That is not to say that fracking never pollutes, but I think there is a bit of scare mongering going on with regards to the water supply. This probably falls under the heading of ‘if we had a robust regulatory environment it would not be that much of an issue’. But then again I could also wish for ponies and have as much luck.
trollhattan
Having spent a decade and a half in environmental engineering and contamination cleanup I can confirm it takes orders of magnitude more money and effort to clean contaminated groundwater than to prevent the contamination to begin with. The fracking problem, as far as I can understand what they’re doing, is they’re injecting contaminants (exactly what, being “trade zuper zecrets”) directly into the subsurface and into aquifers, assuriing millennia of groundwater contamination ahead.
I suppose they pat the locals on their heads and tell them, “Nobody will ever want or need to use that water, anyway.”
Violet
Teabaggers do. They really do.
trollhattan
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Yeesh, she makes Annie Winebox seem positively sparkling with articulation. Sorry, “arrhtikkerlashun.”
Thoughtcrime
@Litlebritdifrnt:
From the comments:
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@Lee: I agree that it won’t pollute the groundwater immediately because of the different depths of aquifers and oil/gas. In fact, I sat in on a presentation where I was assured that the wells were encased in stainless steel and concrete and there would be no leakage.
You know how long concrete lasts? 50 years is the target lifespan. Fracking punches a hole through all the layers and encases it. But that casing won’t last long. We’re threatening our groundwater forever for what amounts to 10 years worth of natural gas consumption.
Bubblegum Tate
I know of several wingnuts who believe that. One of them was even a pretty hardcore Chris Christie fan until he imposed a fracking moratorium, at which point she freaked out and decided he was just another goddamn RINO.
jl
Cole’s not right in the head. He’s been drinking that there city water, what the feds been put something in, is all.
Seriously,
” As West Virginia’s unemployment rate jumps to 6.9 percent, some Mountain State residents believe a hiring boom in the oil and natural gas drilling industry is just around the corner. ”
That is just not Cole’s WV buddies. My teanut relatives in CA, running the remnants of their ancestral family farms into the ground, think the same way. Go with the GOP and the wealthy productive job creators will rev things up, and send some ship a sailin’ in to their harbor.
Problem is that they are so gullible and senseless, that if one of their kind comes along with a good deal and send a ship a sailin’ in, that ship sails right back on out a little later, with a S load of their poor and getting poorer teanut money on it.
That is an empirical regularity I have noted well.
Thoughtcrime
@Lee:
Sure, these things turn out to never be as bad as the DFHs shrilly claim.
Like the BP gulf blowout.
The nuke in Japan.
Or this (warning – totebag alert!): http://www.npr.org/2012/06/12/154839592/under-the-nuclear-shadow-of-colorados-rocky-flats
Anoniminous
The obvious way to decrease unemployment in WV is removing all those job-destroying EPA regulations on how much crap coal mining companies can put in rivers and streams. ONLY because some environmental wackoterrorists say with it has minor health affects.
Poopyman
@Litlebritdifrnt: It didn’t make much sense until I started reading it with my best Foster Brooks voice. Then it flows much easier.
JGabriel
The Intelligencer:
… which implies that even the few jobs that are directly created are going to out-of-staters.
.
mainmati
It may also be that the frakkin’ frakking companies bring in their own specialized crews and have no interest in hiring locals that they probably regard as being nothing more than hillbillies. This is actually a big problem throughout the world. If the WVA Govt was more progressive, it would put on-the-job training and local hires into their permits but I doubt seriously that would ever happen. It is done in many developing countries so go figure.
amk
@mainmati: Bingo. At best, the locals will be hauling the shit like mules and will be working for minimum wages in the ‘booming’ fast food bidness.
shortstop
It’s really all in how you frame the question. Try this instead:
Has anyone noticed that the president is black and that liberals love gay people, women, immigrants and atheists?
OzoneR
A lot of people do, because hippies say it does, so therefore it mustn’t be true.
Mino
Chesapeake Power, the big dog in fracking leases, might as well be Mozilla. Watch for Enron-implosion. The con is in the leases.
Mino
West Virginia employs an amazingly small number of folks directly in coal mining. It’s mostly automated.
If they have any mountains or streams left, they might think of tourism, if they have any clean water left, that is.
Walker
Thankfully I live in a sane area. The township has passed a fracking ban. Way too many of us on well water.
Petorado
The “fracking doesn’t pollute groundwater argument” is served by the same sort of logical parsing that the “guns don’t kill people” argument is: it’s a semantic ploy that pretends to be logic. Fracking is only a portion of a lengthy, and very expensive, process. That the fracking portion of the process by itself may not be the culprit gives the the frackers some cover about the contamination that is taking place. As with any boom, corners will be cut in other areas of the process and that is what is contributing to exploding water wells and flaming faucets.
The fracking boom is causing a cookie cutter approach to other aspects of completing wells, like how deeply to case and cement wells, which mixture of cement will actually work with the region’s soil chemistry and climate, and especially whether companies in a new boom area will give a damn to do their jobs right rather than do what just looks good and pocket the extra cash.
The economics of shale gas are very suspect, as petroleum geologist Art Berman has loudly trumpeted, so the door is wide open to companies to cut costs and maximize their profits — at the expense of the locals who will have to live with the repercussions of these profit decisions for the rest of their lives.
jayackroyd
Funny. In Maine, we called it “town water.”
My dad is still on the well, in fact. My brother’s set up both geothermal and a couple of solar panels, which probably would power the pump if there’s another ice storm that takes the power out for the better part of a week.
Or a place to go if the nuclear war thing heats up again.
Steve S
“West Virginian’s still have learned nothing:”
Well, they haven’t learned how apostrophes work, apparently.
Nathanael
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason:
Five. Ten is what the fracking companies advertise, but it’s actually proven to be five. The reason they advertise ten is that if it’s five *the wells aren’t actually financially viable*. The business model of the fracking companies is to drill the well and sell it within five years to some sucker (the other oil and gas companies being the suckers).
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/future_tense/2011/12/is_there_really_100_years_worth_of_natural_gas_beneath_the_united_states_.html
“Even if we assume a very optimistic 50 percent recovery factor for the 550 tcf of probable gas (536.6 tcf from shale gas plus 13.4 tcf from coalbed gas), that would still only amount to 225 tcf, or a 10-year supply. ”
There is no reason to assume such optimistic numbers. 5 years supply is what seems to actually be happening with shale gas (coalbed gas is more reliable).