Workers finding a future in gas drilling
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PLEASANT GAP, Pa. -- This time last year, Eric Klinger, 19, made his living delivering pizzas. His friend, Matt Bartholomew, 20, worked in a factory that manufactured pharmaceutical products.
Now, after a six-month course, they work for Halliburton, driving trucks, hauling supplies and doing some manual labor at natural gas drilling sites. They both started at salaries of between $45,000 and $55,000 a year -- higher than the wages of most Pennsylvanians, according to U.S. census data.
"Nothing wrong with that," Mr. Klinger said with a laugh.
Added Mr. Bartholomew: "The company that we're in with, they're saying 30 to 40 years they'll be here. So it should be a reliable job."
Mr. Klinger and Mr. Bartholomew are two of the thousands of workers hoping to make careers out of Marcellus Shale gas drilling. More than 70 percent of the people working at Marcellus Shale drilling sites come from out of state, according to a November report by Tracy Brundage, managing director of Workforce Development and Continuing Education at Pennsylvania College of Technology in Williamsport.
Educators such as Larry Michael at Penn College and Todd Taylor at Central Pennsylvania Institute of Science and Technology are working to change that.
They've adjusted their curriculums and added new courses, trying to provide the training that people will need to get jobs related directly and indirectly to gas drilling.
"This is something we're really jumping into," said Mr. Taylor, director of secondary education at CPI. "They're long-term jobs, well-paying jobs, family sustaining jobs. Hopefully, [they'll] replace a lot of the jobs that have been lost in the manufacturing area."
It takes more than 150 types of jobs to drill one well, according to a June 2009 study by Penn College.
Some of those jobs require years of education and experience. For instance, the study says 4 percent of Marcellus Shale jobs are for lawyers, 3 percent are for engineers and 3 percent are for geologists.
"What Penn College did was take a look at that and say 'Out of that 150, which ones do we already have in place?' " said Mr. Michael, executive director of work force and economic development at Penn College. "In some cases, we had all of the expertise and labs. In some cases, and I'll use welding, probably 90 percent to 95 percent of it was here. We just needed to add a piece of equipment or add a particular certification for instructors. And then there's other occupations and areas where we had zero."
First Published February 7, 2011 12:06 am
