Employment in the Utica and Marcellus shales has been greatly overstated by the drilling industry, according to a new study.
The report looking at Ohio and four other states was released on Thursday by the Multi-State Shale Research Collaborative.
Shale drilling has created about 2,791 new jobs in Ohio between 2005 and 2012 where the Utica shale is still being developed, the report said.
In 2012, Ohio had about 8,972 shale jobs, the report said.
In addition, Pennsylvania had about 22,000 shale jobs in 2012, and West Virginia had 6,022 shale jobs.
“The most general implication of our research is that the jobs bounty of shale drilling is not so enormous that public officials should be intimidated from honest scrutiny of its impacts,” the report says.
The report concludes that the “job benefits of horizontal drilling in the Marcellus and Utica shale have been exaggerated by the drilling industry and its supporters,” the collaborative said in its 27-page report.
“While the industry has created jobs, particularly in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, the shale-related jobs numbers are far below industry claims,” the report says.
“We show how shale-related jobs are in the range of thousands to — at best — a few tens of thousands of jobs. They are not in the hundreds of thousands of jobs as claimed by the industry and its proponents.”
The report also looks at what the authors say are the beginning of a “pull back of the industry.” That, the report said, raises questions about the stability and permanence of jobs that have been created.
Member organizations are Policy Matters Ohio, the Fiscal Institute of New York, Keystone Research Center/Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center, Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis in Virginia and the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy.
The report is available online at www.multistateshale.org.
Bob Downing can be reached at 330-996-3756 or bdowning@thebeaconjournal.com.