Pennsylvania’s Energy Future Demands Action by All
Pennsylvania can become a leader in oil and gas when everyone touched by the industry speaks out for progress and against threats to their livelihoods.
That was the message delivered at the Energy Builders rally held Oct. 19 at Cleveland Brothers in Harrisburg. Under a giant American flag fluttering against a vivid blue sky, lawmakers and industry leaders urged around 200 attendees to make their voices heard and tell elected officials, family, and friends that energy delivers jobs and better lives for all.
With its vast reserves of natural gas, Pennsylvania can change the U.S. energy landscape, said Cleveland Brothers President/CEO Jay Cleveland, Jr. Natural gas extraction is propelling job-creating projects statewide, and the rally brought visibility to the overlooked benefits – and necessity — of oil and gas, he said.
“Name one thing you touched in your life today that doesn’t have energy and fossil fuels related to it,” he said.
The rally was organized by Energy Builders, a grassroots coalition of workers, businesses, and citizens supporting energy infrastructure (www.energybuilders.org). The coalition’s top priority is pipeline permitting, said Toby Mack, president of the Energy Equipment & Infrastructure Alliance (EEIA). To break the bottleneck preventing Pennsylvania’s “enormous wealth of natural gas” from reaching the market, the industry must push back against an opposition that is “loud, rude and obnoxious.”
“People like you who depend on these projects for your jobs need to get up and speak louder, in greater numbers than they are, because that balance is what drives the political calculus these decisions are made on,” he said.
Energy-related jobs abound statewide, “even in those parts of Pennsylvania where you can’t find a single gas well,” said state Rep. Stephen Bloom (R-Cumberland). But a proposed extraction tax would make Pennsylvania drilling “unaffordable and uncompetitive” and drive companies out of state.
“When they go, all this comes crashing down,” Bloom said. “Your jobs go with them. This threat is real.”
The proposed severance tax and threatened repeal of the sunset provision of Pennsylvania’s 2012 impact fee would mean double taxation, said state Sen. Scott Wagner (R-York), a declared candidate for the Republican gubernatorial nomination.
“This industry is about to get shafted,” he said, to boos from the crowd. “We are going to continue to fight for this industry.”
Transporting affordable natural gas outside the Marcellus Shale benefits families and promotes business growth, said state Sen. Scott Martin (R-Lancaster)
“We cannot be pro-family sustaining job growth, and we can’t be serious about bringing jobs back from overseas, if you do not embrace the opportunity of building our modern energy grid, and it starts with pipelines in Pennsylvania,” he said.
State Sen. John DiSanto (R-Dauphin) said he ran for the Senate “to make Pennsylvania a more business-friendly climate.”
“The most you can do to support us is get behind your good senators and good representatives,” he urged attendees. “Get the bad ones out, because our jobs do depend on it.”
State Rep. Jonathan Fritz (R-Susquehanna, Wayne) said energy workers must confront lawmakers trying to “regulate away all of our rights and all of our freedoms. You are the ambassador. You are the advocate.”
U.S. Congressman Lou Barletta (R-11th), an announced candidate for U.S. Senate, said the U.S. now has “more energy under our feet than oil in Saudi Arabia,” but many in Washington “don’t get infrastructure.” Natural gas without pipelines is like a beer keg without a tap, he said.
“There’s an opportunity for Pennsylvania to be a leader in the world – not in the country, but in the world,” he said. “Other states would love to have the opportunity, but we have to get out of our own way.”
Industry workers “cannot be lazy,” said rally Emcee George Stark, of Cabot Oil & Gas. “We have to organize and deliver a message.”
That message was underscored by John Borys, Cleveland Brother’s Scranton Wilkes-Barre branch operator. When he served in the U.S. Marines, service members made sacrifices to protect energy sources seen as threatened and leaving the U.S. “dependent on unreasonable, uncertain, unfriendly sources of energy.”
Today, “because of America’s energy miracle, we don’t have to risk our lives, our treasures, on foreign soil to prevent our enemies from holding us hostage for energy. We in Pennsylvania are proud to be right in the heart of this miracle.”
But the miracle can’t be taken for granted, Borys stressed.
“We must continue to build the infrastructure needed to produce and deliver Pennsylvania’s energy bonanza. Everybody needs to stand up and speak for these projects. You folks are doing that. Now, tell your friends, tell your neighbors, tell your coworkers they need to follow your lead, and they need to do the same.”