Worker in a manufacturing facility

Former Congressman Charlie Melancon discusses the importance of Pennsylvania and the Appalachian region embracing energy infrastructure to create jobs and help the United States achieve energy independence.

Across the country, states are increasingly relying on natural gas and looking to these hubs for core resources. According to Forbes, the extensive Marcellus and Utica shale deposits have “changed the directional flow of the entire U.S. transmission system,” which now runs “more east to west and north to south.” A recent Natural Gas Intelligence Shale Primer qualifies that this pace of production would in fact be faster were it not for the lack of midstream capacity in the Appalachian region that have led to “bottlenecks in the Marcellus.” Infrastructure needs to expand here to meet demand and to capitalize on the resource, given how recent developments have demonstrated that the regional natural gas supply is vast and recoverable enough to support sustained market growth across regional economies.

Read more – The Delaware County Daily Times