Gas companies profit, Ohioans bemoan lack of jobs

By Terri Dee

Residents in eight Ohio counties believe big business is giving them the shaft.

Belmont, Carroll, Columbiana, Guernsey, Harrison, Jefferson, Monroe and Noble County citizens said a promise of more jobs in fracking is not being met. Fracking drills water, sand and a chemical mix into cracked rock formations to release trapped oil or natural gas to produce shale gas.

Sean O'Leary, senior researcher at the Ohio River Valley Institute, said there's been great interest in gas deposits in northeast Ohio since the 2000s.

"Many political leaders, certainly business leaders, saw the development of what would eventually become the richest natural gas field in the world would be a driver of economic development in the region," O’Leary explained.

Generating natural gas produces substantial revenue, O'Leary noted, and since 2006, microseismic technology has advanced shale gas production while the need for workers has declined. A 2023 economic impact study by the American Petroleum Institute suggested 50,000 industry jobs would be created in Ohio.

The absence of reinvestment in communities hosting fracking operations is considered troubling by industry experts, especially amid a weakening job market. Big business and policymakers are “turning their heads the other way,” O’Leary contended.

"There are surprisingly few conversations about it, and frankly, most policymakers run away from the fact that economic development has not accompanied the expansion in production," O’Leary observed.

He added one would think the counties where nearly all of the state’s oil production originates would be the principal beneficiaries of jobs. O’Leary sees direct ties to the uptick in AI and data center construction because the facilities require massive amounts of power from gas-fired plants.