Salem News…
Shale tied to 8,000 new jobs
By Brenda J. Linert 

YOUNGSTOWN - More than 8,000 new jobs have been created in the last year with a direct link to the Utica Shale boom. And that's just a start, business officials said. 

Development of the Utica Shale, described by a top executive of Consol Energy as still in its "infancy stages," will mean jobs and probably lots of them. 

Harry Schurr, general manager of Utica Operations and Hess J.V., was one of a number of speakers at Thursday's Youngstown Ohio Utica & Natural Gas, or Y.O.U.N.G., expo who talked candidly about jobs and his company, which employs 9,000 people nationwide. 

"Coal and natural gas provide 75 percent of the power in the United States," Schurr said. "And we are sitting on two of the largest shale plays in the U.S. It just doesn't get any better than that." 

Safety, he said, is his company's highest priority, and if an applicant has a poor safety record, he or she likely will be passed by for employment. 

Drilling rig workers, Schurr said, will earn a very high wage - easily in the six-figure range - when the time comes. But he cautioned it's very "dirty, strenuous work in all kinds of weather." 

"That's the type of opportunities that are out there," Schurr said. "Show me another industry that can provide those kinds of jobs for people out there." 

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