I continue to remain interested in the effects of shale oil on the U.S. economy, even as the price of gas is reasonably low and the price of West Texas Intermediate is 42 bucks. A recent report by Dartmouth/NBER on the effects of fracking (via Reuters):
...Researchers conducting the National Bureau of Economic Research study analyzed data from over 3,000 U.S. counties and determined that within 100 miles of new production, $1 million of extracted oil and gas generated $243,000 in wages, $117,000 in royalties and 2.49 jobs.
"Aggregating to the national level we conclude that aggregate employment rose by 725,000 jobs due to fracking, causing a reduction in the U.S. unemployment rate of 0.5 percent during the Great Recession," according to the study...Gotta say, 725,000 jobs is a lot of jobs, even if a kajillion of them were in Williston, ND. I wonder how long this will last...
Worst case long-term outcome: Centralia
ReplyDeleteBest case - the rest of the PA anthracite region
I agree - as much as people complain about the environmental impacts, PA looks like a third-world country once you get outside of Philly and Pittsburgh. Even if most of the actual work is done by guys brought in from Texas, that's a lot of people buying things in stores and eating in restaurants in areas with sky-high unemployment and lots of closed coal mines and steel plants.
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