How Many Jobs Will Be Created by Shale Drilling?

How many jobs will be created by shale drilling?

This post steps away from the environmental impact of fracking, to look at the one potential positive aspect of this issue: job creation.

No one who is familiar with Ohio's current economic situation could legitimately argue against the point that people here need jobs.

According to a quote from Lorain Mayor, Tony Krasienko, in a recent R&D Magazine article, for every manufacturing job created (by fracking) 5 to 7 ancillary jobs are created.

If, for example, you apply these numbers to the 350 manufacturing jobs expected to be coming to Youngstown via the V&M Star Mills, and you have the potential for between 1750 and 2450 newly created jobs.

The New Gold Rush

It's no wonder this is being referred to as the new gold rush.

The new jobs are obviously a positive thing for the economy, the puzzling part is, why can't the jobs be created without endangering people who live near drilling and brine dumping sites?

The technology exists to do this safely, sure, it costs the gas companies more to implement some of the safety measures, but considering how big the profits are regardless, why not do it safely rather than risk lives?

On Fracking Brine Dumping

A quick Internet search yields Halliburton documents on the process for filtering completion fluids and then reusing the parts filtered out for things like rat poison. So why dump the rat poison makings into the ground to seep back out into drinking water? Because it costs more to filter it? Is the fact that it's cheaper to dump toxins into old wells in an agricultural community than to filter the toxins out a good enough reason to dump tons upon tons of contaminated brine into the ground?

Every single one of these fracking jobs can be created without increasing the environmental risk. The question is, will the government and company leaders step forward and do the right thing?