Earlier this year, Phillip Whalen packed his bags, left his home in Louisiana and set up shop in western Pennsylvania.
The 15-year oil and gas industry veteran said work has dried up around the Gulf of Mexico, in part because of the fallout from the BP PLC oil spill last year. In what has become a kind of reverse national oil rush, Mr. Whalen said, his motivation for heading north to this small community 20 miles south of Pittsburgh was simple.
“I’m doing what I have to do to keep a roof over the head and pay the bills,” the grizzled family man said early one morning. He was dressed in a blue jumpsuit and was smoking a last cigarette outside his hotel before heading off to work.
His company, T3 Energy Services, sent him to Washington, the economic epicenter for exploiting what many think is the nation’s path away from dangerous dependence on foreign oil.
Big energy companies have set up shop here to tap the Marcellus Shale, a massive chunk of marine sedimentary rock stretching from the Finger Lakes region of New York as far south as Kentucky and Tennessee, holding within its subterranean grip vast deposits of natural gas.
Technology that essentially uses extreme water pressure to crack open the rock and liberate the natural gas within so that it can be pumped to waiting pipelines has given mining and energy companies access to the plentiful supply of shale oil and gas in recent years.
Proponents tout so-called “hydraulic fracturing” or “fracking” as the key to satisfying the nation’s booming energy appetite — using reliable, domestic sources — for a century or more. Critics warn that the procedure is dangerous, an untested technology that opens the way for mysterious chemicals to seep into water supplies, while leaving unsuspecting residents of small towns and rural hamlets vulnerable to environmental and economic disruption.
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