An emerging giant
This summer, two Penn State University professors, Timothy Considine and Robert Watson, both from the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, passed off a paid advertisement of gas industry talking points as a research paper.
Considine and Watson wildly over-reached. They claimed the economic impact here in 2008 was 28 percent of that achieved in the Barnett Shale in Texas and had already created 32.5 percent of the Barnett's jobs. That, however, from 431 wells at the time, or only 6 percent of the then 7,170 Barnett wells.
"An Emerging Giant" was met with heavy criticism and outright contempt by a number of organizations and scholars. The Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center, a nonpartisan, policy study concluded "The report serves the narrow financial interests of its funder, the natural gas industry." At a Marcellus Shale seminar in August, the acting secretary of conservation and natural resources, John Quigley, introduced Watson by saying that Watson's study was "unsubstantiated by facts". Nevertheless, the well funded gas industry PR machine has trumpeted "Emerging Giant" nationally so it has become the dominant word.
The gas industry is using this hyped study to stampede our political and business leader into overlooking the enormous damage unregulated drilling will do to our environment, way of life, and ultimately to our economy.
Jon Bogle
Williamsport
