While some material is sourced from overseas, like Guar Gum which is used in the hydraulic fracturing fluid, the vast majority of the materials required to develop and process natural gas is sourced from the United States. The best example of this is steel. Thanks to an increased development of oil and natural gas here in the United States, the steel industry has increased production and have begun to use natural gas as a fuel source in their blast furnaces. V&M Star, a steel company and MSC associate member company, recently completed a $650 million expansion project to build a new facility in Youngstown, Ohio. U.S. Steel recently completed a $100 million expansion project at their Lorain, Ohio facility to support natural gas development and TMK steel company re-opened a facility four years ago just outside Pittsburgh where they now support 400 jobs to service the oil and gas industry.
A recent NPR story highlights the broader manufacturing impact of natural gas development:
The millions of Americans who lost factory jobs over the past decade may find this hard to believe, but U.S. manufacturing is coming back to life. The chest compressions are applied by the pumping of cheap, domestic natural gas. “We are entering a new era,” says economist Jerry Jasinowski, a former president of the National Association of Manufacturers.
The [shale gas] “manufacturing renaissance” theory has broad support, both from business leaders and from most economists. They say manufacturing’s future is getting brighter because of “fracking” – an increasingly popular drilling technique used to recover natural gas from shale formations. Fracking is helping guarantee factory owners access to cheap, reliable and abundant energy sources. People landing fracking-related jobs have gotten a lot of media attention in recent years. But many more workers are quietly finding paychecks in factories as manufacturers start to take advantage of lower natural gas prices.
