Shale Development Means Economic Development

By Sen. Sher­rod Brown

Shale devel­op­ment means eco­nomic devel­op­ment, and that’s excit­ing news for Ohio. It means tens of thou­sands of good-paying jobs across our state, all while help­ing to lower power costs for Ohio consumers.

As with any­thing else, we need to ensure that our local com­mu­ni­ties are con­sulted and that we rely on sci­en­tists and experts through­out the process to main­tain a qual­ity water sup­ply. That means keep­ing a close eye on brine injec­tion, and tak­ing pro­tec­tive actions when necessary.

And we need to ensure that Ohio jobs cre­ated through shale devel­op­ment are filled by Ohio workers.

Last April, I helped con­vene a shale devel­op­ment jobs fair in North Can­ton. Job­seek­ers began lin­ing up at 4:30am, and by the end of the day, more than 1,200 peo­ple came look­ing for work—many of them return­ing vet­er­ans. Thanks to the nat­ural gas boom through­out Ohio, more of those men and women who lined up last April will find a job. More of those heroes who fought for our coun­try won’t have to fight for work when they come home—and our entire state will ben­e­fit as a result.

But there’s more than we can do. Fed­eral train­ing assis­tance is avail­able to ensure that work­ers are equipped with the right skill sets for jobs in shale devel­op­ment. In June, I vis­ited a shale gas train­ing cen­ter at Steubenville’s East­ern Gate­way Com­mu­nity Col­lege (EGCC). EGCC offers sev­eral train­ing pro­grams for jobs in the Utica and Mar­cel­lus shale plays, includ­ing a U.S. Depart­ment of Labor (DOL)-funded ini­tia­tive called ShaleNet that works to ensure that local res­i­dents are qual­i­fied and can be hired for new jobs in the oil and gas indus­try. EGCC also has a pro­gram, Retrain Amer­ica that offers sim­i­lar train­ing for Ohioans look­ing for work in the shale indus­try. We need to con­tinue invest­ing in fed­eral work­force devel­op­ment efforts.

We should also help part­ner busi­nesses with local com­mu­nity col­leges and work­force invest­ment boards in order to develop spe­cial­ized cur­ric­ula and train­ing. I saw a good exam­ple of this at a com­pany called Trem­car, in Dover, which man­u­fac­tures tankers for use in shale devel­op­ment and the petro­leum indus­try. Trem­car has been coor­di­nat­ing with the Buck­eye Career Cen­ter and Stark State Col­lege to train Ohioans for new jobs in the nat­ural gas indus­try. The com­pany employs sev­eral grad­u­ates and interns of pro­grams at the Buck­eye Career Cen­ter, and will be bring­ing in a weld­ing instruc­tor from Stark State Col­lege to run inten­sive two-week weld­ing train­ings for its new hires.

We need to sup­port these exist­ing part­ner­ships, but we also need to build more of them. That’s why I intro­duced the Strength­en­ing Employ­ment Clus­ters to Orga­nize Regional Suc­cess (SECTORS) Act. This bill would help local com­mu­ni­ties and edu­ca­tional insti­tu­tions tai­lor work­force strate­gies to meet indus­try needs. This bill would allow more work­ers to receive place­ments and attract more busi­nesses to our state. The SECTORS Act would orga­nize stake­hold­ers con­nected to a regional industry—businesses, unions, edu­ca­tion and train­ing providers, and local work­force and edu­ca­tion sys­tem administrators—to develop plans for grow­ing that industry.

We know that Ohio is home to count­less inno­v­a­tive com­pa­nies and a world-class workforce—now we need to ensure that energy com­pa­nies arriv­ing in the state are uti­liz­ing all that Ohio has to offer.

I’m opti­mistic about this excit­ing oppor­tu­nity. I’m eager for the jobs that nat­ural gas explo­ration will bring to Ohio, and I’m com­mit­ted to mak­ing sure those jobs are filled by Ohioans.

This is a whole new indus­try to explore. But we must get it right. We must pay close atten­tion to ensure that our future energy needs are met by our own workers.

U.S. Sen­a­tor Sher­rod Brown rep­re­sents the state of Ohio. For more infor­ma­tion: http://www.brown.senate.gov/

Posted by Guest 1 Columnist on Jul 18 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.