Coal has been essential to Pennsylvania’s Jefferson County since it was established in 1884, but the industry – not only producers but the supply chain right through to the state’s proud manufacturing sector – have been hit hard by a perfect storm of plummeting gas prices due to the shale gas boom and President Barack Obama’s new Clean Air Act emissions regulations.

The Environmental Protection Agency has been hammering the country’s coal industry since 2008 and also made life tough for the power industry, and with it Pennsylvania, once a proud coal-producing state, which has seen jobs and opportunities drop right off.

Jefferson County’s director of economic development and planning Brad Lashinsky told Energy News that while there’s no denying the impact of the plethora of EPA rules damaging the coal sector the thriving oil and gas sector has opened new doors.

“A lot of our coal is now going to China and other foreign countries to where it’s being used. It has been a very difficult transition,” Lashinsky said as Energy News toured the region last week.

“I believe some of our coal companies have been able to work with their employees in conjunction with our trade and tech schools to get them re-certified to where they can possibly transfer to the gas or trucking industries.

“We’ve seen some of our companies that filled niche opportunities for the coal industry like Brookfield Equipment – which had always specialised in coal mining cars – who have now had to diversify into the manufacturing of locomotives and trolley cars for major metropolitan areas.

“So given the situation with the coal industry it’s very important for us to work with our local manufacturers to help them not only help their employees to diversify but help the companies to diversify when you have a boom and bust cycle or a set of regulations that really hamper the continued growth of that industry.”

While there’s no denying gas is much cleaner than coal, he said power plants are now “really struggling” with whether it’s economically feasible to convert over.

In turn, the electrical rates will rise and “someone will have to pay for it somewhere along the line, and it’s most likely going to be placed onto the consumer”

“In Jefferson County we would like to see an equal opportunity for all resources to be utilised to a degree where we’re not taking one from the other, we’re not using an excess of one over the other to the point where you’re depleting it, yet trying to make them all work in harmony,” he said.

“They all serve a purpose – they burn at different temperatures and produce different outcomes, and we can use them all to some degree then that’s more people at work, more companies surviving and people living better lives.”

Near the Punxsutawney area, which was saw millions of dollars of investment into the countythanks to the 1993 Bill Murray hit movie Groundhog Day, based on a weather forecasting tradition that goes back to the 1880s, the Rosebud Mining Company recently laid off 300 workers.

Jefferson County is again working with them through local trade schools and community colleges to help the workers find different types of work.

Brookville also recently laid off some workers who were manufacturing their mining cars. Since then they have been able to diversify and land some large contracts with larger metropolitan areas for streetcars and locomotives and have been able to bring several of those workers back.

“Any type of machinery and so forth that deals with the mining industry has been hit to varying degrees, so working to help them stay afloat until hopefully it comes back to life,” Lashinsky said.

The problem is that no-one – not the coal industry and even local county officials – could foresee what kind of an impact the Marcellus and Utica shales would have on local business.

Lashinsky said interest in gas exploration was initially sparked when the price of gas was $US13/thousand cubic foot.

“I don’t think anyone had any real idea of how much [gas] we had sitting here under Pennsylvania, and they certainly didn’t recognise that we didn’t have the Utica sitting right underneath the Marcellus,” he said.