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Dix Communications - Gas & Oil
August 2013 Edition
35
ndustry creating job opportunities Alicia Balog, Dix Commnications
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ith increased interest in fracking in Ohio, people are exploring job opportunities in industries related to the oil and gas fields. Welding is one such industry, and Fortis College in Ravenna has seen an increase in interest its welding technology program due to the job possibilities. “Basically yes, we are seeing an increase in interest in welding from a community standpoint because there are more jobs because of the fracking and oil and gas industry,” said Sonya Hartburg, campus president. Vicki Young, welding technology department chair at Fortis, said the welding program and the school as a whole has seen an increase in students interested in the field due to interest in fracking industry as well as the natural gas, shipping, trailor and manufacturing industries. “We literally started with three people, and now we have close to 70 in four years,” Young said. Students who complete the 15-month program are certified in various positions of welding, with one of the highest being a 6G. Young said the G stands for groove, which is something that has been worked on by a machine and created a bevel below the surface of the weld, and if a person can do a 6, which is a pipe inclined at a 45 degree angle, it’s assumed that he or she can do all the lower positions of welding as well. They can use these different levels of welding for jobs, like pipe welding for the fracking industry. “If you’re just talking about the fracking industry, which like I said involves pipe welding, I mean we certainly have students here that are 6G and 5G welders” Young said. “There are different positions in the welding field. One being flat. Two being horizontal. Three being vertical, up or down. And four being overhead. But when you get to the higher numbers, that’s when you’re more closely or more actually affiliated with the pipe welding industry.” Once welders get enough experience, they can also become inspectors and supervisors or open their own company. Young said she thinks the field grow more in the next few years because a lot of people are coming back to Ohio for the job opportunities related to skilled trades. She said one reason for that is because the jobs are here right now. “Welding has always been here to stay, but the influx for the demand of workers is just astonishing,” she said. “It just really is. I mean there are welding schools that are opening up as we speak because the need is there.” Truck driving has also seen an increase in interest during the past year but more from people in Pennsylvania rather than Ohio. TDDS Technical Institute in Lake Milton hasn’t seen a large influx of truck drivers interested in the oil and gas industry yet, and school director Gary Lopuchovsky said this is because Ohio is cau-
tiously moving into fracking and doesn’t have many running wells. “We did about a year ago. We did get a bigger influx of people who wanted to get into the oil and shale, the fracking-type thing,” he said. “There was a local platform that they had just across from the outlets in Grove City, and I know that we did train several people that went over.” The influx he saw is based on wells in Pennsylvania because it’s worked with fracking more than Ohio, Lopuchovsky said, but he thinks that truck driving jobs created by fracking will be more local jobs and a lot of people interested want to stay locally. He said he thinks that there will be another influx in the next six to 12 months based on when the state decides how to tax the industries and, once the refinery in Columbiana runs, how the refineries set themselves up here. “It comes down to where the wells are and how many people they’re going to need, what kind of truck driving they’re going to need,” he said. “We have a diesel mechanics class here too, so the industry really likes to look at both our diesel mechanics and our truck drivers, which when you go through our diesel tech program, you get our truck driving program also. And these guys can not only work on the platforms, they can also drive trucks.”