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.
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On Monday, the Cleveland Plain Dealer released a PolitiFact that examined recent ads by the oil and gas industry claiming to have created 40,000 jobs last year in Ohio. PolitiFact gave the ad its lowest rating — “Pants on Fire” — and strongly questioned the industry’s job creation claims.
PolitiFact found that the ads overstate the number and type of jobs created and failed to disclose that many of these jobs may have gone to out-of-state workers. In addition, they found the fact that the numbers were based on economic modeling rather than actual surveys of employers undermined the veracity of the claim.
PolitiFact also noted the high rate of turnover in industry hiring data, showing that even if Ohioans are being hired, the work is often temporary in nature. [Read more…]
In recent years, politicians, oil and gas lobbyists, and industry experts all promised that expanded oil and gas drilling in Ohio would lead to job creation and economic growth. However, a new report from Cleveland State University shows that even though economic activity increased in shale counties in 2012, employment growth failed to materialize.
A March report from the Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs examined two economic indicators to see if there existed any early economic trends in the development of the shale region in Ohio. [Read more…]