NORWICH – A meeting scheduled next week at Morrisville State College to discuss a new academic program of study that would train workers for jobs within the natural gas industry couldn’t come soon enough for Chenango County Economic Development Consultant Steven Palmatier.
With the prospect of hundreds of new jobs for Southern Tier workers within the next three to five years, the college is being encouraged to prepare a workforce, he said.
Many natural gas industry followers are predicting a June release date for the state’s revised hydrofracking regulations. Energy companies and their suppliers have been waiting in the wings for 18 months for the state Department of Environmental Conservation’s Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement to be released.
The statement of regulations will allow companies to begin developing the abundant Marcellus and Utica formations in the region, and if it’s anything like what happened when the Marcellus Shale action began heating up two years ago in neighboring Pennsylvania, there will be hundreds of jobs available at well sites within the first 18 months.
“In four years from June, we are going to need a natural gas industry workforce here,” said Palmatier. “There’s no other industry here where you are going to need that kind of employment.”
Morrisville State College’s Norwich Campus Director Marsha L. Cornelius said an advisory panel would meet to create a needs assessment statement, the first step in establishing a training course. The course would most likely be a two-year program with the possibility of becoming four-year.
As evidenced by the professions represented on the advisory panel, Morrisville’s proposal is being taken very seriously. Panel members include Bruce Selleck, HO Whitnall Professor of Geology, Colgate University; Stuart Loewenstein, a geophysist and President of Exploration and Development, Norse Energy Inc.; David Palmerton, president, Palmerton Group, an environmental engineering firm; Darryl Hood, director of North American recruiting for Schlumberger; and Brad Gill, executive director, Independent Oil and Gas Associates.
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