JOHNSTOWN — Not that long ago, Pennsylvania was barely able to produce one-quarter of the natural gas its residents needed.

Today, the state is awash in natural gas and looking to markets outside the commonwealth’s borders – all due to Marcellus Shale.

“We’re approaching 100 percent of our needs here in Pennsylvania,” said Lou D’Amico, president of the once-fledging Pennsylvania Oil and Gas Association.

With an abundance of natural gas and a relatively steady price, manufacturing companies are joining the fun and creating jobs that could last for decades, U.S. Rep. Mark Critz,   D-Johnstown, said.

“The opportunity we have with the Marcellus gas is something I’ve not seen in my lifetime,” Critz said.

“The volume of gas that’s going to be pumped out of western Pennsylvania is tremendous.”

Along with the development of the Marcellus natural gas play has come jobs – tens of thousands of them – in all areas of the region, D’Amico said.

The phenomenon is called the “Marcellus Multiplier” – one job prompts another job that requires yet another.

“The benefit job-wise across the state is 88,000 new jobs created because of Marcellus,” he said.

“It will be a quarter of a million jobs generated because of the industry over the next decade.”

The shale that is getting all of this attention is a 400-million-year-old, dense, natural gas bed with the potential to supply much of the nation’s energy needs for years to come.

The play contains more than 490 trillion cubic feet of gas – enough to power this country’s homes and electric plants, said Terry Engelder, a professor of geosciences at Penn State.

The Marcellus Shale bed is reportedly the world’s second-largest gas field – bested only by South Pars gas field in the Persian Gulf.

Original estimates were that Marcellus gas would last for 20 years.

That has been increased to 50 to 100 years – with some in the industry predicting the Marcellus gas wells could be productive for 200 years, said Tom Murphy, co-director of Penn State’s Marcellus Center for Outreach and Research.

As technology advances, drilling companies will be able to pull a greater percentage of gas from the massive play – which stretches across the Northeast.

Marcellus has its tightest grip on Pennsylvania, where two thirds of the land mass – or 65 million acres – is underlaid with the black shale bed.

Marcellus also runs through much of the Appalachian Basin beginning in northern Kentucky into parts of West Virginia, Virginia, Ohio and New York.

The shale play is as deep as 9,000 feet, while the depth in the Cambria-Somerset region is closer to 7,000 feet.  

Geologists and drilling companies have long known about Marcellus, but it was only about four years ago that Range Resources hit on the technology for the hydraulic fracturing process used in other nonconventional shales in the west work in the deep, tight Marcellus play.

The industry last year had an economic impact of more than $8 billion in Pennsylvania alone.

That impact is projected to more than double over the next decade, Kathryn Klaber said.

She is president and executive director of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, a 170-member strong drilling trade organization.

The Cambria-Somerset region has seen few wells in comparison with the boom in counties such as Lycoming, Sullivan and Bradford in the northeast and Washington, Fayette and Indiana ito the south and west.

But, it’s all a matter of time, says D’Amico and others            – including U.S. Rep. Bill Shuster, R-Hollidaysburg.

“This is an opportunity for Pennsylvania to restore itself as key economic juggernaut, which Pennsylvania was in the early 1900s,” Shuster said. “We have a tremendous opportunity and we don’t want to overtax it or overregulate it.”

Cambria County Commissioner President P.J. Stevens is enthusiastic about the positive impact Marcellus will have on the region. He was a leader in bringing in a western Pennsylvania land company to seek bids for county-owned land.

The 400-plus undeveloped acres near the county prison are being packaged with that of private landowners to seek a lease bid that would provide a signing bonus and royalties on the gas taken from the shale bed.

“It could be the biggest economic driver for our region since the demise of coal and steel,” Stevens said. “It’s good-paying jobs and terrific spinoff with the creation of new businesses.”

As in the past, Stevens urges residents to put time and energy into the lease agreements they sign with the goal of protecting the environment.

“We will see the drilling,” he said. “I would say our area is blessed with this reserve.”

Stevens said the responsibility to protect the environment is coupled with a responsibly to capitalize on the bounty the region has been given.

Ken Mesko, executive director of the Cambria County Industrial Development Corp., said Marcellus Shale gas could well be the savior for the future - bringing not just on site jobs, but the guaranteed secondary benefits - following the decline of coal and steel in the region.

“We believe this is an unprecedented opportunity,” he said.

The authority has joined the Cambria County commissioners in looking for a lease agreement with a drilling company for some of the land it owns, especially the 150 acres of undeveloped area in the South Park complex.

Located across from the Gamesa USA blade manufacturing facility in Cambria Township, the land could be especially attractive to a drilling company because the interstate Texas Eastern transmission line passes nearby, Mesko said.

Officials of Somerset County say that while they have just a few Marcellus wells drilled, their economy is benefiting from secondary industries such as steel fabricating and welding.

“We’re seeing many benefits in the economy, such as the construction of tanks for water trucks,” Commissioner Pamela Tokar-Ickes said.

“You see a lot of the trucks on the road across the state that were constructed in Somerset County,” she said.

Johnstown Area Regional Industries and the Somerset County Economic Development Council are working with their business leaders to take advantage of the much-needed supply chain for the drilling industry.

JARI is forming a consortium to help companies link up with those in the Marcellus industry, President Linda Thomson said.

An outreach event is in the works for July, when local companies will be able to meet with a variety of companies related to drilling, she said.

Officials in Clearfield County, with a handful of Marcellus wells, hope to be on the cutting edge of service in the northeastern Pennsylvania Marcellus industry and the southwestern core.

Rob Swales executive director of the county’s economic development corp., said his agency broke ground in mid-April on a multi-tennant building with a focus on secondary industries.

Meanwhile, planning directors from the six counties in the Southern Alleghenies Planning and Development Commission are working on an energy strategy to help in planning for natural gas drilling along with wind and solar, executive director Edward Silvetti said.

Along with the improved employment and benefits to private land owners, the Marcellus boom is helping local, county and state governments with tax revenue.

A report prepared by a Penn State undergraduate student in community and environmental development studies shows that despite the worst economy in three decades, those counties with 150 or more Marcellus wells saw increases in some areas and decreases far below the state average in other areas of tax collection. Those top-producing Marcellus counties saw an 11 percent increase in state sales tax from 2007 to 2010.

By comparison, counties with no Marcellus wells saw their sales tax decrease by more than 6 percent, the report showed.

Better-than-average increases were also reported in areas of real estate transfer taxes and state personal income taxes.

The report notes, however, that the analysis reflects only the early stages of the Marcellus drilling and does not include the cost of impacts on public service and the environment.

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