No commercial natural gas drilling takes place in Georgia, but that hasn’t kept the industry from touting the economic benefits to the state.
The American Petroleum Institute released Tuesday a survey listing the 18,505 “jobs supported by these (fracking) activities.” Fracking refers to hydraulic fracturing, a process to extract hard-to-get oil and gas from shale fields in Pennsylvania, Texas, North Dakota and beyond.
The institute projects 32,000 fracking-related jobs in 2020 and 39,000 by 2035.
Gas exploration is underway near Dalton, but market prices remain too low for the gas to be sold commercially.
