EVERYTHING!

Courtesy U. S. Geological Survey.

According to Geology.com, the Marcellus Shale Formation is a huge deposit of black shale that underlies much of Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, and West Virginia.  Geo-logists have known for a long time that this shale contains natural gas – a lot of it  (about 50 trillion cubic feet of it – enough to supply the entire United States for two years with a wellhead value of over a trillion dollars), but because the shale layer is buried a mile or more deep in the earth and because this particular rock formation is hard and non-permeable it was too expensive a proposition to extract it.

But that’s all changed and V&M Star Steel as well as other forward thing enterprises knew it. Just within the past few years two technologies, improved methods of hydrofracing (a method of breaking up the rock to release the gas) and horizontal drilling, have triggered an explosion of drilling and leasing activity in the areas above this rock formation resulting in some of the most productive wells in the eastern United States.

The Marcellus is also the closest natural gas deposit to the high demand markets of New York, New Jersey and New England, and could easily service much of the central portion of the Unites States as well. How is the gas going to be delivered from the well heads of the Marcellus to these markets? PIPES, FITTINGS, CONNECTORS, PUMPS – and lots of them, and V&M Star with its $650 Million expansion is just one of several local companies that stands to prosper as a supplier to oil and gas exploration and extraction in the Marcellus fields:

• Pipe manufacturer TMK IPSCO, parent company of Ultra Premium Oilfield Services, last February signed a lease for the former Sharon Tube facility off Collar Price Road in Brookfield, and is now about ready begin production of steel-tube connections. TMK IPSCO is the parent company of Koppel Tubular Corp., which has operations in nearby Pennsylvania’s Beaver County, Koppel, and Ambridge.
• Wheatland Tube Co.‘s Howland factory employs 140 hourly and salaried workers to make electric welded pipe used in the oil and gas industry and also operates a plant in Niles.
• Dearing Compressor & Pump Co., located on Simon Rd. in Youngstown and makes pumping equipment for the drilling process, is building a 50,000-square-foot expansion to its existing facility and could add 20 to 25 more workers to its 90-worker staff.
• Severstal Warren steel mill, RTI International Metals Inc. and Patriot Metals in North Jackson, can also be major players in the oil and gas industry boom about to hit this Valley.

If the Marcellus Shale holds up to the optimistic expectations of some natural gas experts, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York and West Virginia could see an enormous boost in income, sustainable for decades.