Recently, the Beaver County Times – in a story titled “Pa. natural gas development leading to reverse brain drain” – took a deep, analytical look at the positive trend that has emerged across our region whereby more Pennsylvanians are moving back to the region, and raising their families here, thanks to the safe development of job-creating shale.
This important trend was further underscored by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette last week in a story headlined “Oil and gas jobs outnumbered steel jobs in Pa. last year.”
The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, likewise, described this positive economic pattern in yesterday’s paper under the headline “Gas industry remedies ‘brain drain’ in Western Pennsylvania.” This from Sunday’s story, which features employees from several MSC member companies:
For Justin Welker, Western Pennsylvania was always home. His friends were here. His family was here. Unfortunately, his job wasn’t.
When Welker graduated from California University of Pennsylvania in 2006 with a degree in fisheries management, he had to move to North Carolina to find work as a biological fisherman for the state.
Then came the Marcellus shale boom. Welker, 33 and living in Wexford, was able to return home, landing a job as water supervisor with Range Resources, a leading independent oil and natural gas producer in the region.
The Crawford County native is an example of what experts believe is the natural gas industry’s gradual reversal of the region’s decades-old “brain drain,” the mass exodus of young, educated workers to other states because there were no local jobs for them.
It’s a reversal that includes workers in fields other than those typically in demand by drilling companies, experts said, pointing to new positions in public relations, law, accounting and other specialized areas such as Welker’s.
“It (the gas industry) was a chance for me to move back home and get in on the ground level of something and make a difference,” Welker said. He feels good about the work he’s doing. “When we leave, we leave it better than we found it,” he said.
And this as well:
As the gas industry continues to grow, so does the chance for fast-track advancement, according to one worker who started at the bottom but has risen through the ranks.
David Knapp, 30, of Albion in Erie County went to Florida 11 years ago after some college. He worked for a restaurant company, but, “growing up in Pennsylvania, that’s where I felt my heart was,” said Knapp, who now lives in Jefferson Hills. “I saw the influx of natural gas industry people coming from Oklahoma, Texas and other states for Marcellus shale,” Knapp said.
With no experience, he took an entry-level position at FTS International, a provider of well completion services. Today, he’s a district manager for the FTS Washington County district, supervising nearly 500 employees.
Though the gas industry is still young, Knapp’s story is not uncommon, said Pamela Percival, a spokeswoman at FTS headquarters in Fort Worth. “It’s not unusual in the oil and gas industry for a go-getter to be promoted, to move up quickly,” she said.
Interested in shale-related careers? Please visit our Job Portal.
