Government data now show that the frenzy of drilling for shale gas in Susquehanna County and Pennsylvania has not been the economic boom that industry claimed.
The StandardSpeaker reports:
“Shale-gas development also had minimal impact on Susquehanna County income, even though the region is among the state’s most-heavily
drilled. The county’s average income decreased from 2008 to 2010, its unemployment rose by 3.2 percentage points and poverty increase from 2000 to 2010.”
“Gas development was still emerging during the period and few Susquehanna County residents initially found employment in the industry, said Dennis Phelps, executive director of TREHAB, a Montrose-based agency that provides services to the poor, unemployed and elderly in six counties,including Susquehanna, Wayne and Wyoming.”
“Everybody was rolling in from out of the area,” he said. “It was easier to bring people in from Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas than do the
training here.”At the same time, he said, the housing market crash hammered Susquehanna County.”
“A lot of the local business basically collapsed,” Phelps said. “The timbering business associated with housing slowed down, the stone business slowed down. All the basic infrastructure associated with jobs went into a spiral.”
As I have pointed out in prior posts, industry claimed massive job gains for Pennsylvania which obviously have not materialized. It is also important to note that existing jobs and local economies have clearly been devastated by shale gas extraction though little economic benefit has accrued from natural gas extraction.
Unfortunately it looks as though the “resource curse” has raised its head yet again in Pennsylvania.
The resource curse thesis was first put forward by Richard Auty in 1993 and argues a paradox that resource rich communities end up with more poverty and degradation rather than the promised wealth. Numerous studies have linked natural resource abundance and poor economic growth. It is unfortunate given Pennsylvania’s long struggle with poverty and resource extraction that lessons have not been heeded.