Canonsburg, Pa. – Earlier today, Marcellus Shale Coalition (MSC) president and executive director Kathryn Klaber appeared on Pittsburgh’s KQV Radio to discuss a broad range of issues, including the updated Penn State University economic impact study released last week. Below are key excerpts from the interview:

On the Updated PSU Economic Impact Study:

“As one of the key authors, Dr. Bob Watson, had presented last week, he said: ‘This is an industry that made promises about the kind of economic impact, and has more than delivered on those promises.’ … More than $8 billion in value added during 2010 alone; $1.8 billion in state and local tax revenues from the industry; job growth to nearly 212,000 by the year 2020. … In 2008 alone, natural gas companies paid over $1.8 billion in lease and bonus payments to Pennsylvania landowners.” [AUDIO]

On the Marcellus Shale’s National, Global Impact:

“The authors point out that Marcellus Shale could be the second largest natural gas field in the world when developed fully, providing an amount of energy to American consumers equivalent to the energy content of 87 billion barrels of oil. For scale, the entire U.S. currently consumes 7 billion barrels of oil a year.” [AUDIO]

On Keeping PA’s Business Climate Competitive:

“I think what we want to keep an eye on, again, this early in the development of the play is how do we create an overall competitive climate for developing this resource? The Marcellus is very productive and has a promising future, but it also has other competitors for the capital to be deployed there as opposed to here. And we want to make sure that as we are in the early stages of this development, we put in place the competitive legislative and regulatory framework that will allow this to be a sustainable part of our development and economy going forward. So any new tax that’s put on, on top of the already significant taxes being paid by the industry, really needs to be done with a lot of care and thought …. And so far, what has been put forth does not in any way meet that.” [AUDIO]

On the Private Sector, Natural Gas Industry Creating Economic Growth, Jobs, Opportunity:

“This industry is not using any public dollars to subsidize the development. And so, as we look at the overall impact on the industry, we need to keep in mind that these are private dollars going into the economy.” [AUDIO]