Down River – Jan. 30, 2014
By John Lipez
A Two-Edged Sword:
The price of natural gas has been soaring upward, reaching heights not seen in more than three years. Given the role Marcellus Shale development plays in the local economy, the surge upwards is promising for Clinton County’s near term economic picture.
That view was sustained earlier this week when Mike Flanagan, head of the Clinton County Economic Partnership, gave an update on the county’s two largest natural gas-related companies.
Flanagan told a meeting of the county’s natural gas task force (see story on The Record’s page A1) that the two firms situated in Lamar Township are doing well and looking forward.
Specifically Trican Well Services has 240 employees, about a 100 employee increase just in the last year.
Most encouraging was word relayed that the Trican district manager looks for 2014 to be much better than a year ago, this the expectation even before our brutal cold weather and the recent significant jump in the price of natural gas.
And it’s ditto at the nearby Baker Hughes facility, now just a little more than one year old at its state-of-the-art facility in the Lamar Township Business Park. The company employment level is at 180 and Baker Hughes is looking to add about 20 more to its payroll.
It should be noted there is travel involved for their workers; both firms operate crews all over Pennsylvania, from Tunkhannock in the northeast to Westmoreland County in the southwest.
The sudden surge in gas prices, up over $5 per thousand cubic feet as of last Friday, ends a major slump between 2009 and early 2012, the drop attributed to the drilling frenzy in Pennsylvania shale gas fields, as well as in Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas.
The price bottomed out at $1.92 in April of 2012, not too long after local business types were envisioning big time dollar signs, all part of an anticipated area boom which some said would make Williamsport “the next Houston.”
Certainly Williamsport as well as Clinton County have substantially benefitted from Marcellus Share development. But Williamsport today is far, far from Houston status; the price plummet has provided a dose of reality that area shale development will, as some locals cautioned, have its ups and downs.
On evidence so far this year, 2014 looks to be one of those “up” periods for many.
The other side of the increase in the price of natural gas is its effect on consumers, from power companies who have been converting from coal to gas because of the low gas price to area businesses and home owners who converted from other energy sources to natural gas, again because of its price lower than fuel oil.
So now natural gas costs more and users pay more, no way around it.
Experts tell us that the precipitous jump in the price of natural gas is mostly the result of the abnormally cold January in the Northeast, but they expect the price to stay relatively high, although nowhere near the pre-financial crisis levels of 2008 when the cost per thousand cubic feet was roughly three times higher than it is today.
175th Fun:
This 175th birthday for Clinton County just might turn out to be both educational and fun.
Certainly we’ve already begun to learn more about our county’s history and its member municipalities.
The Record plans to be a player in all this, starting this week with a look at Chapman Township and its 195th birthday, officially Feb. 3, the township celebration set for this Saturday, Feb. 1.
We want to thank the county planning office, county birthday party planner Maria Boileau and Chapman’s own Beth Whitty for a variety of information about the township.
Our favorite anecdote, after going through some of the material, has to do with a visit to Chapman Township by Thaddeus Stevens, a noted U.S. Congressman from Pennsylvania during the Civil War (Stevens played ever so well, hairpiece and all, by Tommy Lee Jones in last year’s great history lesson of a movie, “Lincoln”).
It would appear that Stevens must have been a state legislator a few decades earlier, involved in what one account says was the “birthplace of ballot box stuffing” right there in Youngwomanstown, Chapman Township.
The year was 1837 or 1838, depending on the source. The issue was the building of the Sinnemahoning Extension of the West Branch Division of the Pennsylvania Canal (completed to Farrandsville at that point).
Wouldn’t you know it, politics entered the fray. The Democratic Party was reported opposed to state construction of the canal, but Republican Governor Joseph Ritner was in favor and the story goes, needed its construction to be re-elected so the canal laborers could remain employed.
Stevens, described as “a wily politician,” was dispatched to Youngwomanstown and came up with a plan for the many canal workers there to “vote early and often.”
Election results showed over 700 votes for Ritner in a town with only 50 legal voters. But Ritner was defeated and the canal never extended to western Clinton County.
The story contained no reference to the need for photo i-d’s for the voters.
Anway, happy birthday Chapman Township; here’s to many more from everyone at The Record.
