The Marcellus Shale Caucus: The Potential of Natural Gas Development

Floor Speech

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Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. I do. Let me talk about, just out of fairness and equity, two young men, and this was actually published in the local paper. And they were doing a coverage of the Marcellus shale. And I was very impressed with this article because it was two young men who had just graduated from a local high school, actually in Clinton County, not too far off over the line from where I live. And they had decided they were going to go for a little technical training. They were going to go to a community college setting, get a certificate program, basically for driving a truck. And they did that, and then they secured jobs with someone who I assume was hauling sand or hauling water for the Marcellus operations around the area. These young men I have no doubts are today, and fairly fresh out of high school, are earning somewhere in the neighborhood of over $60,000 a year, and probably with overtime a little more. That's a pretty incredible start for a young person.

Because I have to believe that my district, the 22 percent of the landmass of Pennsylvania that I serve is probably a lot like your district that our number one export for many years has been our young people. We educate them, and I like to think we do a good job of that, and they go to where there's opportunity. And there has not been opportunity in our economies, and our areas have been somewhat depressed economically for some time. And today, opportunity has returned. That is what this has been.

And there are jobs sitting open now of all types. And that's the exciting part. When I hear about people that are unemployed--and we have had folks protesting about not having jobs. Well, come to the Fifth District of Pennsylvania. You don't have to work in the natural gas industry, because the natural gas industry they've kind of taken, they've been able to recruit some really good folks out of other positions. Some of those have been retail positions, service positions and manufacturing positions, but now those jobs are sitting open. And that's the effect that this kind of an economic opportunity has.

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