According to Jack Manning of the Beaver County Chamber of Commerce, it is in the best interest of every Pennsylvanian for “natural gas to fulfill the full potential it has for revitalizing our economy.”
With the significant natural gas reserves in the Marcellus Shale plays, Manning explains that the Beaver County Chamber of Commerce is excited about how to “tap that gas and make sure that it fuels all of the ancillary businesses [and] all of the manufacturing sites.” He goes on to say that this begs the tiered question of how to integrate off-shoots, “just like we are feeding residential units with natural gas to heat homes…[so that] we make sure that the supply of natural gas fuels these factories and manufacturing plants in the future that are here.” The answer, he explains, is that “we can’t do it without more infrastructure and more pipelines being built.”
Projects like Mariner East play a significant role here through its direct and indirect impacts on Pennsylvanian market growth, power generation, and manufacturing capacity. These pipelines inject growth across the Pennsylvanian economy and linked workforce development.
Manning asserts that, “the jobs that are created through energy and advance manufacturing…are good, strong, family-sustaining wages, whether you are working as a carpenter or a welder, building the facility and maintaining it, or an engineer and a business manager working in the fence lines to run the plants.”
He concludes that, “those wages are important for the economy. Those strong family-supporting incomes are what provide the disposable income that allow the mom-and-pop shops in downtown Beaver and other places to thrive. All Pennsylvanians have an investment in seeing this plant succeed and natural gas fulfill the full potential it has for revitalizing our economy.”