Drilling activities are revving up in Westmoreland
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There's oil and gas activity throughout the hills east of Pittsburgh wherever there's room -- and most of that room is in Westmoreland County, said Vince DeCario, a Derry Township supervisor.
"We're pretty rural here. We have a lot of farm country, and that's where most of the drilling is going on," he said.
Derry Township includes a number of communities and nearly 96 square miles of land, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Becaise drillers are utilizing the township's open spaces, Mr. DeCario said operations there have been met with little resistance.
"They're drilling in the rural areas and not close to houses. We haven't had many problems," he said.
About 15 to 20 wells have been drilled there by Williams, a Tulsa, Okla.-based oil company that is also drilling in Clearfield, Columbia, Luzerne and Susquehanna counties.
In Westmoreland County and others in the state, Williams is drilling into the Marcellus Shale. Often described by officials and industry executives as southwestern Pennsylvania's gold rush and the second coming of the coal and steel industries, the Marcellus is said the be the biggest natural gas field in the United States. It spans nearly 61 million underground acres beneath New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
Southwestern Pennsylvania is called the "fairway" of the shale by industry experts and its economic impact reaches beyond the energy in demand, also promising a pipeline of jobs.
The industry is expected to generate work for the unemployed, workers in other industries who see new opportunities in the natural gas field, temporary workers who will boost the economy and people who may relocate to Pennsylvania with their families, said Kathryn Klaber, Marcellus Shale Coalition president and executive director.
A study commissioned by the coalition and released by Penn State earlier this year projected the industry's growth would lead to more than 88,000 new jobs in 2010 and more than 111,000 in 2011.
First Published December 2, 2010 6:11 am
