On Thursday, State officials released the much anticipated 2012 Utica shale production report. Administration officials were quick to celebrate the findings of the report and heralded it as the beginning of a “new boom” in Ohio. Realistically though, this report includes information that should cause officials to temper their expectations – at least in the short term. As we have written in the past, the Kasich administration and the oil and gas lobby both promised that shale exploration would bring a wave of new jobs to Ohio. While recent reports have noted that not only were these claims dubious to start with, in reality the job growth is not nearly as strong as they originally estimated. The report provides some clues on why that is. Only 87 horizontal wells were producing oil and gas last year at some point – most of them were only active for three months or less. And while officials expect that number to increase to 362 by the end of this year it is still unlikely that the increase will lead to the giant job expansion promised. [Read more…]