After a container ship struck the Francis Scott Key highway bridge last week, collapsing the structure, Baltimore Harbor’s coal piers have been cut off from the rest of the world.
For now, the companies that produce the coal will have to find a way to other ports, mainly Norfolk or the Gulf Coast. If not, customers in India, China, Japan and South Korea, among others, may have to turn to alternative sources.
John Saldanha, a professor of global supply chain management at West Virginia University (WVU), said Baltimore is the second largest U.S. export port for coal behind Norfolk, accounting for about a fifth of U.S. coal exports.
He said even if Norfolk and other ports have the capacity to absorb coal shipments that would otherwise come through Baltimore, it will raise shipping costs. That includes more train crews, more railcars and locomotives and more space to store the coal on the ground at another port.
“In the short run immediately, clearly, there’s going to be an increase in transportation costs. And depending upon what capacity the rail carriers can find, and how much diversion capacity, the rail carriers find both on the transportation networks as well as at the ocean piers, that is going to tell whether the coal producers will actually have to throttle back on their production in the short run,” he said. “Because if they continue producing at current rates, and there is no way to load that coal onto railcars, and for those railcars to go to the port, and there is no capacity at the port, then clearly that will require the coal producers to throttle back on production.”
Saldanha said in ordinary times, northern Appalachian coal from West Virginia and Pennsylvania is closer to the Port of Baltimore. Now that, that’s been disrupted, even temporarily, producers may take a look at whether they need to consider an alternative,
“Given that Baltimore and its proximity to the northern Appalachian coal basin might have been attractive from a transportation cost standpoint. But putting all your eggs in one basket, shipping everything else with the port Baltimore, of course, such Black Swan events nobody can anticipate, but then you always want to hedge,” he said. “And if you have all of your eggs in one basket, and you’re exporting everything to one single export port, then if anything happens either to the transportation links to that port within the port or coming out of that port that is going to that’s going to disable your operation, or at least hobble your operation in the short run.”
The Longer Way Around
Also ordinarily, Mid-Atlantic ports are closer to markets in Asia through the Suez Canal. But recent turmoil in the Middle East has caused the diversion of oceangoing vessels around the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa. Saldhana said that gives Gulf Coast ports an advantage.
“So normally, coming from the Port of Baltimore, it would have been a lot easier to go into the Suez Canal,” he said. “But now because of the Red Sea, and the Houthi rebels affecting shipping over there, all the ships, so going down from the Gulf of Mexico to the cape, that might actually even be a little bit more competitive compared to coming out of the East Coast, given that all the ships of several shipping companies are opting to route their ships down around the cape.”
Even if Asian customers may need to consider sourcing coal from elsewhere – Australia, for example – Saldhana said they still prefer northern Appalachian coal because of its quality.
“So I think in the long run, the northern Appalachian Basin coal provides a superior product to the other coal sources,” he said, “but in the short run, there are definitely substitutes that are available that, while not of the same quality, would definitely fill the need.”
Federal, state and local officials have said their first priority is to reopen the Port of Baltimore. But they will have to remove all the pieces of the fallen bridge from the water, and that’s not a small task. Saldanha said the port may not reopen for weeks, if not months.
Career Technical Education (CTE) prepares students for future trade jobs by pairing academic lessons with hands-on, real-world experiences. Monday, the program announced its teacher of the year is Lynette Jones.
Career Technical Education (CTE) prepares students for future trade jobs by pairing academic lessons with hands-on, real-world experiences. Monday, the program announced its teacher of the year is Lynette Jones.
The culinary arts instructor said she feels lucky to work with kids in the state to address what she calls a “skill gap.”
“We have skilled jobs that are just going unfilled, because we don’t have the people to put them in,” Jones said. “CTE centers are the resources for these employers, we are training their future employees.”
Students in the program can enter careers in high school and receive credit by learning in a simulated workplace and apprenticeship opportunities. They can earn industry-recognized credentials that will prepare them to enter the workforce, continue college or a trade school, or enlist in military careers.
The Cleveland-based company said an unfavorable ruling from the International Trade Commission was behind the move.
Last year, Cleveland Cliffs and the United Steelworkers petitioned the U.S. Department of Commerce to declare unfair trade practices on foreign tin and chromium coated sheet steel products.
Commerce then imposed tariffs on four countries: Canada, China, South Korea and Germany. However, the International Trade Commission rejected the tariffs earlier this month.
Cleveland Cliffs said the plant’s workers would be offered opportunities to transfer or receive severance.
West Virginia’s U.S. senators reacted negatively to the Cleveland Cliffs announcement.
“While little consolation to the hardworking men and women facing this incredible loss – and to the Weirton community at large – I fought to sustain operations there since learning of Cleveland Cliffs’ and the United Steelworkers’ concerns with unfair trade practices last year,” said Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito. “As I have said before, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s final decision announced in January demonstrated our government’s recognition of the damage these unfair trade practices have had on America’s domestic tin mill production and its workers.”
“Today’s announcement is a consequence of the International Trade Commission’s decision to turn a blind eye to nearly 1,000 hard-working employees right here in West Virginia in favor of illegally dumped and subsidized imports,” said Sen. Joe Manchin, a Democrat. “Cleveland-Cliffs’ closure is an absolute injustice not only to American workers, but to the very principle of fair competition, and it will undoubtedly weaken our economic and national security.”
Resourceful. Self-reliant. These are some of the values many people who live in the mountains pride themselves on. But could we sustain ourselves? As part of our occasional series “Wild, Wondering, West Virginia,” Lana Lester of Wyoming County submitted her question to the Inside Appalachia team: “Could West Virginia Be Self-Sustaining?” She said she, “always had the feeling that God Blessed West Virginia with all of our natural resources and we have everything there in the state to survive.”
Resourceful. Self-reliant. These are some of the values many people who live in the mountains pride themselves on. But could we sustain ourselves? As part of our occasional series “Wild, Wondering, West Virginia,” Lana Lester of Wyoming County submitted her question to the Inside Appalachia team: “Could West Virginia Be Self-Sustaining?” She said she, “always had the feeling that God Blessed West Virginia with all of our natural resources and we have everything there in the state to survive.”
So, could we survive, on our own? And what would that really look like? We set out to try to find some answers.
Survivalist Store And Some Goats
Our search began outside a survival shop in Cross Lanes, a suburb of Charleston.
In a small pen outside, there was a herd of Nigerian Dwarf goats. “They are small, but they have the highest butter, fat content of any of the dairy goats,” said Bob Keller, the owner of Keller’s Survival Shop. These goats are mostly pets. But if needed, they could provide his family with goat milk.
Roxy Todd stands with a few Nigerian Dwarf goats and talks with their owner Bob Keller, outside his survivalist shop in Cross Lanes, W.Va. Credit: Eric Douglas/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
“They breed, they give birth, they produce milk and as long as you continue to milk them they’ll continue to produce milk,” Keller said.
Goats can also provide meat. Raising goats is just one way people with a small plot of land could be more self-sufficient, Keller said.
“People really don’t realize if you took a 10 by 20 spot in the yard, at home how much food that spot would create.”
Inside his survivalist shop, Keller sells dried food that has a long shelf life, and water purification materials.
“There are people that I know locally that are in the 97 percent self-reliant.”
Some of these people Keller knows might be called “doomsday preppers,” a subgenre of folks who prepare their home to be able to survive on their own, in case of a catastrophic event. But Keller said he sees all ranges of people in his store who are interested in learning to survive without having to go to the store.
“My business in general is going up rapidly.”
Beyond his own business, Keller sees other signs that more people seem to have an interest in self-reliance.
“I mean, even our elementary schools are putting in gardens, right, to teach kids where food comes from. Because the kids don’t know where food comes from,” Keller said.
A child inside a high tunnel garden, managed by Grow Ohio Valley in Wheeling. Credit: Glynis Board/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
This lack of knowledge and skills makes people pretty vulnerable, compared to our grandparents or great-grandparents, Keller said. Things like canning, growing food, carpentry and basic mechanics — there is a lot that our West Virginian ancestors understood that we lost.
“I think it’s a product of 21st century America,” Keller said. “We were sold this approach growing up that well, you if there’s a problem go buy the solution.”
But Keller said he thinks people in West Virginia have retained a lot of these skills and knowledge.
“You go to rural areas and those self-sustaining skills and activities are still alive and well. When you look at less densely populated states, you have a lot of this activity going on.”
But it is not only West Virginians who are interested in learning to be more self-reliant. A survey commissioned by the economic analyst website, www.finder.com, found that in 2018 1 in 4 American adults spent up to $2,000 on home renovations to prepare for emergencies. Millennials actually spent the most on survivalist gear. But does that mean that younger people are more prepared? Or are they just shopping as a way to compensate for a lack of hands on know-how?
“You’re seeing some people who are raising their children to be self-reliant. And you’re seeing some people who, who aren’t self-reliant themselves. Of course, they’re not raising their children that way,” Keller said.
Credit: Glynis Board/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Is Global Trade Essential?
But what would it really mean to be self-sustaining, not just individually, but as a state? Like, what if West Virginia broke away from the rest of the country? Or what if a natural or geopolitical disaster suddenly forced us to make it entirely on our own, cut away from the rest of the country or the world? No importing, no exporting and producing everything ourselves.
We sent our question over to economist John Deskins, at West Virginia University, to get his take.
“What was going through my mind? To be honest, I was thinking, ooh, this is a bad idea. If you want my honest opinion?”
On a personal level, Deskins said he gets why this would be appealing.
“If you want to harvest the deer from your backyard, or if you want to grow your own tomatoes and cucumbers in your backyard, you may be able to do that better than the ones we import from California,” Deskins said. “I’d much rather get a backyard tomato, other than one from the grocery, but people are free to do that.”
As an economist, Deskins thought it would be disastrous if we forced people to buy things that are made locally. Trade is just more efficient, he said, than producing everything ourselves.
“You know, if everyone’s just going it alone, then you don’t really have the opportunity to be really good at something and to capitalize upon your kind of special talent.”
Currently, West Virginia is pretty self-sufficient when it comes to electricity. About 92 percent comes from coal that is mined in the state. Of course, the grid we pull from is a regional grid, so it is possible the electrons you are using right now were not produced by coal. And setting up a new grid that is independent of the rest of the country would take a lot of work, and time. But it is possible as a long-term goal, if the state continues to mine coal.
Five barges full of coal being transported along the Kanawha River in Marmet, W.Va.. The coal is headed to a power plant. Credit: Eric Douglas/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Apart from electricity, though, West Virginia is not so poised to be self-sufficient. We import roughly $3.4 million worth of goods from out of the country, with mechanical products at the top of the list. Incidentally, a lot of the state’s imports include airplane parts, so we could likely do without those if we were just trying to survive on our own.
But when it comes to what we would eat, the picture is a lot more bleak. Despite Bob Keller’s optimism that we could grow a lot of our own food in a 10 by 20 plot in our yard, West Virginians currently produce just one-seventh what we consume when it comes to food. So we would need to support and incentivize farming.
No More Coffee, No More Chocolate
And we would have to do without a lot of foods that just do not grow well here — like lemons, chocolate and coffee. Not to mention a lot of other things that use raw materials that we just do not have in West Virginia, like cell phones, or EKG machines.
And doing without these things, economist John Deskins argued, means we would have a lower quality of life.
John Deskins, director of the Bureau of Business and Economic Research at West Virginia University. Credit: Aaron Shackelford/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
“I’m saying you have two extremes. One extreme is where individual households are self-sufficient. That is an extreme system that’s like a caveman type system. And then the other end of the extreme is a purely global economy where we have specialization across the entire world, and trade on a grand scheme.”
In the middle of these two extremes, though, Deskins said he could imagine a world where we are still importing and exporting some things, but still producing more stuff and growing more food, in state.
“It’s better than no specialization at all. But it’s not fully capitalizing upon the high level of specialization that we have in a global economy,” Deskins said.
Even as a champion of an economic free-market, Deskins admitted there would be some benefits to being more self-sustaining.
“It would greatly reduce the transportation cost. It would reduce the fuel, and other expenses associated with moving goods. And there might be some environmental benefit associated with that,” Deskins said. It would also be easier to keep a closer eye on health and safety standards.
Still, bottom line, if we want our economy to be strong, global trade is essential.
But, something economists like Deskins do not measure when they talk about quality of life, is the desire to buy local, even if it means at a higher cost. Some people would rather pay more money for a chair made by their neighbor, than buy one online that comes from China. And it is the same with food. Some people like the idea of learning to grow their own corn and perhaps taking it to their neighbor to grind it into cornmeal. And inevitably, this might mean learning to survive with less.
Larry Mustain hold heirloom corn called Bloody Butcher, which he grinds inside his historic mill. Credit: Daniel Walker/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
For another perspective on what it could look like to be more self-sustaining, we spoke with Beth Wheatley, who works with the West Virginia Nature Conservancy.“I see a West Virginia that really uses nature as a driver of economic growth,” Wheatley said. “We’re standing atop a ridgeline in Mingo County; in every direction are mountains— some are thick with forests; others are stripped to rubble and rock. Over here we’re looking at a flat landscape, but still completely surrounded by forest on both sides. And this is very typical of many sites in West Virginia where you have former coal mine lands surrounded by intact forest.”She brought us here, because she said it shows two radically different types of landscapes, both of which are abundant in central Appalachia. And both have potential to help people in West Virginia be more self-sufficient, said Wheatley. “There is so much that we can produce ourselves.”
Aerial video in southern W.Va. Credit: Kara Lofton/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
West Kentucky Farmer Barry Alexander doesn’t have an answer on when the Trump administration will reach a trade deal with China, now a year into tariffs that have hamstrung some Ohio Valley industries.
Alexander is optimistic these continued negotiations will be worth it, but his plan in the meantime lies in massive, silver storage bins on Cundiff Farms, the 13,000-acre operation he manages.
He pulls a lever, and out tumbles a downpour of pale yellow soybeans.
“These beans have been in here since Halloween day,” Alexander said. “The large bin on the right, that’s 350,000 bushels. The next-size bins down, that’s 180,000 bushels. To give reference, a thousand bushels is one semi-truck load.”
Credit Liam Niemeyer / Ohio Valley ReSource
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Ohio Valley ReSource
Soybeans at Cundiff Farms.
He’s been trying to hold onto about half of his soybean and corn bushels, waiting to see if he can sell for a better price before he’s forced to start planting again in early April.
Crop prices have crashed partly because of Chinese tariffs, and the losses have put a strain on some farmers he knows.
Credit Liam Niemeyer / Ohio Valley ReSource
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Ohio Valley ReSource
Massive, steel storage bins, half-full with grain, on Cundiff Farms in west Kentucky.
“There are farmers that have decided to retire because they didn’t want to work through these things now. We’re to that point,” Alexander said.
Alexander said he’s survived in part because his sprawling farm has resources to work with: eight full-time employees, two new $550,000 combines he traded up for, and the storage bins to help ride out bad crop prices.
“Our large structures are not cheap, but financially for our farming operation, they’re a necessity for us to do what we do,” Alexander said.
Farmers like Alexander are coping with losses from tariffs and a continuing trade war, and it’s not clear when it will end. A March 1 deadline for negotiations with China was delayed indefinitely by President Trump, and an agreement with Mexico and Canada that Trump signed in November has yet to be ratified by Congress. The retaliatory tariffs on U.S. crops and dairy remain, compounding problems caused by overproduction and low crop prices, and small farmers are suffering the most.
Credit Liam Niemeyer / Ohio Valley ReSource
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Ohio Valley ReSource
Barry Alexander, a lifelong west Kentucky farmer, in his small office.
Size Matters
“If you look at all the large farmers, these guys have the storage facilities to wait out bad prices,” Kent State University-Tuscarawas Agribusiness Professor Sankalp Sharma said. “For a lot of these small guys…they couldn’t actually store their commodity, they still had to deal with those lower prices.”
Sharma and others argue grain prices have been low for five years because farmers are overproducing, and tariffs are only making the situation worse.
“The United States soybean harvest this year in general was just crazy. There was a bumper crop, and prices were down because of that,” Sharma said. “This was just your classic demand and supply situation.”
Credit Alexandra Kanik / Ohio Valley ReSource
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Ohio Valley ReSource
Both Ohio and Kentucky set records for soybean harvests in 2018: 289 million bushels and 103 million bushels, respectively. This is up significantly compared to two decades ago, when Ohio harvested 162 million bushels and Kentucky harvested a little over 24 million bushels in 1999.
Farmers are also becoming more efficient than ever before — Ohio set records in 2018 for most corn and soybean bushels produced per acre.
Credit Alexandra Kanik / Ohio Valley ReSource
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Ohio Valley ReSource
Oversupply problems haven’t been limited to grains, though. Small dairy farmers are also dealing with excess supply and tariffs, with hundreds of cases of extra milk being dumped at Ohio Valley food banks.
Farms At Risk
Greg Gibson’s operation is small, but his family has made it work for decades. He milks 80 cows at his dairy farm in Bruceton Mills, West Virginia, and he took over the operation in 2002. The past year of tariffs hasn’t been easy.
“Everything’s down. Historically, if milk price is down you can sell some corn or you could sell some replacement animals are something,” Gibson said. “But nothing has a lot of value to sell right now, so it’s really hard to generate any additional revenue. And a lot of that is because of the trade problems we’re having.”
Like many Ohio Valley farmers, Gibson is receiving payments from the $12 billion in federal relief from the Market Facilitation Program intended to to help those who suffer losses from tariffs.
Credit Nicole Erwin / Ohio Valley ReSource
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Ohio Valley ReSource
Small farms are squeezed by the dairy crisis.
Gibson appreciates Trump’s efforts to renegotiate trade deals, and like Alexander, is cautiously hopeful about the prospects of new trade deals.
But he said he’s also disappointed in Trump because the payments are not nearly enough to recoup his losses. He says milk’s price has plummeted nearly a dollar per hundred pounds of milk sold and the payments only reimburse 12 cents of that.
“I would have rather him said ‘I got to do this. You’re going to take the hit. Sorry.’ Don’t promise me you’re going to take care of me and then don’t,” Gibson said.
Gibson’s squeezed budget has had him extend paying off his farm loans and put off paying several repair bills. He’s also had to put up his 150-year-old family farm as collateral for his loans.
Farm lenders say Gibson’s situation isn’t unique right now. Senior Vice President of Agricultural Lending Mark Barker helps oversee lending for Farm Credit Mid-America, which serves most of Ohio and Kentucky.
“Are we doing things differently? Well, sure,” Barker said. “Because we have customers coming in now and telling us ‘I’m struggling at this point. I’m challenged.’”
Barker said while most people are making their loan payments right now, the rapidly increasing amount of debt farmers are taking on to deal with depressed prices is concerning, especially for smaller operations.
“It seems like the larger producers, you think about their equipment and everything else, they’ve got some added advantages,” Barker said. “It doesn’t mean the smaller producer is necessarily ‘out,’ but I do think they got more challenges in this current environment.”
U.S. Department of Agriculture economists predict nationwide farm debt will reach $263.7 billion in 2019, levels of debt not seen since the 1980s farm crisis, when thousands of farm families defaulted on their loans amidst a trade embargo with the Soviet Union and high loan interest rates.
He said one solution for small farmers to withstand these depressed prices is to switch to crops that bring a higher value, like vegetables. But those can be more labor-intensive, and the transition can be difficult.
“If you’ve been in a family that has milked cows or grown row crops for three generations, and I suggest you grow three acres of sweet corn and five acres of snap beans, there will be some resistance to that,” McConnell said.
McConnell said it might take a new generation to redefine what a successful small farmer business model can look like.
One of those younger small farmers is Joseph Monroe, who moved from Indiana to central Kentucky to raise beef cattle and grow tomatoes and greens. Monroe believes a way forward for smaller farms is to find ways to work together to sell products and have a greater market impact.
“I think there needs to be some pioneers and some examples out there of how to draw up a contract to work together,” Monroe said. “I think we need to throw all the darts and see what hits.”
About 2,000 people gathered in Pittsburgh last month for two gas and petrochemical industry conferences. Despite those numbers, people noticed who wasn’t there: investors from China. Participants discussed the impacts of tariffs, best practices and hiring.
Tariffs
West Virginia University’s Brian Anderson had the job of letting everyone know that Chinese government’s China Energy would not be on hand to talk about their $80 billion plus investment in West Virginia. Why? Tariffs.
At both the Northeast Petrochemical Construction and the Hart Energy DUG East conferences international trade was major topic of discussion. For petrochemical producers — notably the businesses that take natural gas and crack it into ethylene that ultimately shows up in plastics — tariffs are becoming a concern.
“We’re going to have an oversupply,” said Taylor Robinson, the president of PLG Consulting. “The relief valve for that is exports.”
During his talk, Robinson highlighted increased production, including new plants coming online in the region. He said one of the biggest risks to growth right now are escalating tarrif threats.
“China has put a big tariff on imported polyethylene,” Robinson said. He added that has thrown a “big wrench” into many Gulf Coast producers’ plans to export to China, the largest market in the world for polyethylene.
“Never a dull moment,” he quipped.
And on the production side, U.S. steel tariffs are giving one Canadian pipeline firm pause.
Credit Nancy Andrews
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Taylor Robinson, President of PLG Consulting, called tariffs one of “the biggest risks right now” for the petrochemical industry. He spoke at the Northeast Petrochemical Construction Conference in Pittsburgh June 19, 2018 at the Westin Conference Center.
Cale Johnson, traveled from Calgary with Canadian CORE Linepipe to work the floor. For him, these tariffs are having a “big time” impact.
“Our product is steel so we’ve been directly affected by the new tariffs,” he explained. “It’s increased our commodity price significantly so it’s been challenging. However all steel products are affected, so it’s just a challenge the whole industry is faced with.”
Johnson said ultimately, end users will have to pick up increased costs created by tariffs.
“If we are launching down here, we might have to evaluate American distribution or pipe that’s made in the states to possibly avoid those tariffs,” he said.
Best Practices
At Hart Energy’s DUG East, which brings together natural gas industry drillers, shippers and support businesses, much of the focus was how to better adjust to the current market — gas prices are low and production increasing. So, the question is: how do you drill smarter?
Credit Nancy Andrews
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Benjamin Hulburt, Chairman, President & CEO, Eclipse Resources speaks at Hart Energy’s DUG East Conference in Pittsburgh June 20 & 21, 2018 at the Pittsburgh Convention Center.
Benjamin Hulburt and his company Eclipse Resources recently set records for the length of the “laterals,” or the horizontal distance from the vertical drill in a well pad, it has drilled. The company drilled out more than 20,000 feet (nearly four miles) from the well pad, but with low gas prices, Hulburt said the economics can be challenging.
“In today’s natural gas environment, if you are not the low cost producer, the low cost driller, you’re going to struggle to survive,” Hulburt explained. “You have to be constantly innovating, and constantly trying to drive down that cost curve if you are going to survive.”
Lots of conference attendees were optimistic about the future of the industry, despite the absence of Chinese investors and businesses. Shawn Quinton, from Oklahoma, works for a German company, Linde Engineering. The engineering firm designs and builds the plants that are essentially giant refrigerators that cool the natural gas so that it separates into the different gas types – methane, ethane and other derivatives Currently, they’ve got one job in the region, and he thinks he’ll get more.
Credit Nancy Andrews
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Chris Allen, left, and Shawn Quinton, right, from Linde Engineering North America, Inc., ran out of business cards the first day of the conference. “There are a lot of regional people here that attend this that we don’t normal contact with, so this is an excellent opportunity to do some elbow-rubbing and handshaking that we wouldn’t normally see on a daily basis,” Quinton said. “And you just can’t walk up to their door.”
“We’ve had really good traffic,” Quinton said. “Unfortunately, I am just about out of cards… I brought 100. Tickled pink to have that problem. Next time we’ll stock up and make sure we bring 200.”
Workforce
There was also a lot of talk about jobs and training. Chevron’s Lee Ann Wainwright was part of a panel on STEM training and jobs.
She said the industry needs candiates with “basic life skills.”
“We just need people to show up,” Wainwright said when discussing hiring practices. “We need them to pass the drug test. We need them to be able to have a conversation, look you in the eye, and come on time.”
Credit Nancy Andrews
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Lee Ann Wainwright, a Policy, Government & Public Affairs Advisor for Chevron said her company is looking for the “basic life skills as it relates to a job,” when looking at new hires. She participated in panel “Readying the Next-Generation for Careers in Advanced Manufacturing & Petrochemicals” at the Northeast Petrochemical Construction Conference in Pittsburgh June 19, 2018 at the Westin Conference Center.
Wainwright, who is a policy, government and public affairs advisor with Chevron, said her company looks to train employees on the job.
“Don’t get me wrong — there’s always going to be some jobs where you need that 4-year degree and maybe beyond — but a lot of jobs in the energy and manufacturing right now are skilled labor jobs and once you have the foundation and you are in the door, we can get you trained,” she said.
Along with workforce issues, trade wars and low gas prices that can affect growth, other issues surfaced. Community concerns and protests against drilling and pipeline construction is now a part of the industry’s equation.
There was some limited discussion on environmental issues such as leaking methane from gas wells and pipelines. That’s a big deal when taking into account the entire life cycle of natural gas and its impact on climate. And one speaker cited climate change with a different twist — the extreme weather events that hit Gulf Coast production areas. Coastal flooding regularly takes petrochemical operations offline. In comparison, Applachia’s weather is relatively tame, which could make the region a more reliable home for petrochemical production.
Nancy Andrews is a Pittsburgh based journalist and 2018 Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellow studying natural gas pipelines in Appalachia. Follow her on Twitter @NancyAndrews or @NancyAndrews on Instagram.
