Natives find way home by shale drilling
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They call them "gumbanders" -- Pennsylvanians who went away for a decade or two but have been pulled back.
What's tugging many of them is about two miles underground. The debate on the environmental impact of Marcellus Shale natural gas drilling is far from over, but the economic impact is already undeniable.
One need only drive through the booming Southpointe office park in Washington County, where Range Resources, the pioneer of this Appalachian gas boom, keeps outgrowing its space. Out in the rolling hills beyond, there's so much drilling activity that some workers could conceivably work a lifetime in the field and never have to leave Washington County.
Range has 300 horizontal Marcellus wells in Pennsylvania, most of them in this region, and "we're really just getting started," spokesman Matt Pitzarella said.
Matt Curry, 40, is a Lower Burrell native who a few years ago was living in Dallas, which makes autumns tough on a guy with Steelers season tickets. Then Mr. Curry read an investor report on Range's play in the Marcellus Shale and shot a congratulatory email to Range senior vice president Ray Walker Jr.
Mr. Walker replied with something like "Hey, thank you, would you like a job?" That day, when Mr. Curry took his wife, Heather, to lunch to celebrate her 34th birthday, she read the email and said, "I guess we're moving to Pittsburgh."
Mr. Curry, a Penn State graduate with a degree in chemical engineering, became the director of engineering and development for Range's Marcellus Shale Division in 2008. There are about 400 Range employees in southwestern Pennsylvania now, up from one when Mr. Walker opened the Washington County office in 2007. Mr. Curry said he was "employee No. 66 or thereabouts -- we'll just go with the Lemieux number."
Tony Gaudlip, 41, is another Penn State engineering graduate with a similar tale. He had lived all over the world with his wife and three children, most recently in Jakarta, Indonesia. Back there, his family had a gardener, two drivers and two maids because "that's what you did in Jakarta."
Mr. Gaudlip worried about what such luxury was doing to his children. On the one hand, they were getting an international education and befriending children from all over the world, which was great. On the other hand, they weren't learning a work ethic, and he didn't like the way other expatriates who grew up with that lifestyle treated those who served them.
First Published July 28, 2011 12:00 am
