Oil Makes A Comeback In Pennsylvania

In the last decade, large-scale mining corporations have come to seek a new Pennsylvania fuel bonanza in the Marcellus shale fields. Pennsylvania was where the American oil industry started, well before it moved southwest to places like Texas, and now it is experiencing a renaissance.

Thanks to the modern techniques of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or more commonly referred to as "fracking," there has been an 1860s-like growth of shale drilling in Pennsylvania throughout the northern counties and southwestern part of the state.

According to Mark Price, Labor Economist with the Keystone Research Council in Harrisburg, in 2005, there were only eight wells dug in the state’s Marcellus region. By 2008, the state had 335 new wells, and three years later, nearly 2,000 wells were drilled. He said there was not a big explosion in new wells right now, but he expected the industry to stay at its current levels for a while.

In the 19th-century Pennsylvania oil boom years, cities would be founded, grow exponentially in a short time, then become almost ghost towns as prices rode the roller coaster down. Titusville went from 250 residents in 1859 to 10,000 five years later. Pithole was four huts when the boom came in early 1865 and had 50 hotels or rooming houses by the year’s end.

Pennsylvania’s current boom is similar, if more modest. Estimates say that about 20,000 people work in the fuel-mining industry in Pennsylvania. It is a good amount, but (accounts for) only one percent of all workers in the state.

There has been speculation that the refineries the Pew family built for its huge Sun Oil business in the 19th and early 20th centuries along the Delaware River in and near Philadelphia will be revived. Delta Air Lines has taken over some to refine its own fuel, but that is a small business, not more than a few hundred workers.

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