TOWANDA - A rose may be a rose, but this Rose is like no other.

Rose is a drill site, a one- to two-square mile area, or "pad," on land that Chesapeake Energy Corp. has leased just outside of Towanda. Chesapeake lets its lease holders name the sites, and this one honors the lessor's wife.

Towering toward the sky on Rose is the drilling rig, a "double" that will drive two 1,200-foot pipes, or double strand, at a time into the well casing. Some sites have "triples" that can stack and drive three pipes, but Rose just needs two. So far, Rose is about 5,000 feet deep.

Rose is one of 22 active Chesapeake rigs in Bradford and Susquehanna counties. Chesapeake is the largest leaseholder in Marcellus Shale with approximately 2.7 million gross acres and 1.5 million net acres.

So far, it's paid $1.2 billion to landowners in Pennsylvania to go onto their property and erect sites like Rose, which will plow into the Earth to anywhere between 6,000 to 8,000 feet. When the drill hits pay dirt -- the gas-rich Marcellus Shale -- it will make a turn and drill horizontally.

Casing after casing of steel and cement will form an eight-layer system into the depths of the Earth. Eventually, a charge will be sent and fired, forming fractures in the shale, followed by the infamous "fracking fluid," a mixture of water, sand and a proprietary mix of chemicals injected at high pressure.

The sand will fracture the shale, coaxing it to release its natural gas. The rig will go away, eventually replaced by a "Christmas tree," an assembly of valves, spools and fittings that will distribute the gas through pipelines and into service. The gas will go for decades.

It's getting there first that's the hard part, and the part that has most people suspicious.

The Marcellus Shale industry indeed has its fans in the Towanda area. Some businesses are booming, and unemployment has steadily decreased this year, due in part to the gas industry.

But it faces a climb as steep as a well is deep if it's going to get along here.

Mixed feelings

Information both good and bad swirls around the Marcellus Shale drilling companies. Everything is questioned -- from their motives to their operations. It's the bad information that frustrates Brian Grove the most.

He's senior director of corporate development at Chesapeake Energy, and a resident of Tunkhannock in Wyoming County. Grove was a former top executive in Pennsylvania state government, most recently chief of staff to state Sen. Lisa Baker, R-20. He's also worked in the administrations of Govs. Tom Ridge and Mark Schweiker.

Part of Grove's job now is to work with residents and community groups, serving as a liaison between Chesapeake and local governments. It's a job he said he got by telling the company it was doing a lousy job of communication.

"I told them, look, people up there are afraid because you're not telling them how this works," he said. "The less people know, the more afraid they are."

Grove's knowledge of gas drilling is astounding. For someone who has worked in politics and now handles Marcellus Shale queries, he speaks with acute authority. In April 2009, he joined Chesapeake.

The job-creation dilemma has been among gas-drilling's largest hurdles.

Chesapeake alone employs about 40,000 in the United States. It has 1,200 employees in Pennsylvania. Of those jobs, 500 are local and not drilling positions, Grove said. Of the 700 folks engaged in drilling, about 150 are Pennsylvanians.

"It is essential to know what the drilling rig is and what to do on it," Grove said.

He believes it will be four to five years before there will be an active drilling work force among Pennsylvanians in Marcellus Shale.

Tour of the rig

Observing the operations on Rose was like watching a finely tuned crew on a ship. The men -- five workers at a time plus the tool pusher, who guides an enormous spinning tool down on top the double strand as it drills -- move in and out of position with calculated ease and timing.

Two men guide two more pipes from a hydraulic lift into position for drilling. Another will use what looks like the world's largest ratchet wrench to tighten the connection between them. The tool pusher will hoist the device way overhead and over the pipes while another checks more fittings, and yet another watches a computer screen for information such as depth and drill mud use.

It's a well choreographed ballet done in mud and jumpsuits. They will repeat this dance over and over for 12 hours until another crew relieves them. Twelve hours later, it will be their shift again.

A company man, or onsite consultant, keeps track of everyone's comings and goings. On Rose, that man is Alan Rowe, of Cortez, Colo. Thirty years into this business, he worked his way on up from roughneck, pulling shifts in such places as Saudi Arabia. He lives onsite in a trailer and keeps closely in touch with the tool pusher to ensure smooth operations.

Joining Rowe is Art Hany, the drilling supervisor who hails from McAllister, Okla. At 35 years in the business, he too started drilling life as a roughneck. He'll keep watch over this and other Chesapeake operations in the area.

Among the other crew is Lance Breland from Possum Point, La. He's among the younger guys, though he's worked on drill sites in southwestern Louisiana.

Workers needed

Chesapeake and its wholly owned subsidiary, Nomac Drilling LLC, opened the doors Nov. 18 to its $7 million Eastern Training Center and Housing Facility in Sayre, Bradford County.

The 39,360-square-foot center includes housing for 276 Nomac gas-drilling workers as well as a 3,600-square-foot training facility. It includes 11 buildings, among them six dormitories, a cafeteria, a training center, a non-smoking recreation center, a smaller recreation center for workers who smoke and a laundromat.

The center is to "provide a convenient housing option for all drilling-rig employees," said David Fisher, Chesapeake's vice president for drilling services. "Our investment in this state-of-the-art training facility demonstrates the local job growth that Nomac Drilling is creating in the Marcellus Shale and the company's commitment to taking good care of its employees."

Grove said the training center is the most efficient way to teach the most people, but jobs involving Marcellus Shale are not just about drilling wells. Everyone from technical staff to office managers are needed, he said.

"It's a broader range of jobs, from blue collar to white collar," Grove said. "The drilling part is big and unique."

It's also for the fit, if not the young. Stacie Schearer, a staffing specialist for Halliburton, was at a recent career day at Milton Area High School, handing out information to students about possible gas-drilling careers. Young men who may not be college bound are right in her demographic, she said.

Trainees in rig work can make as much as $40,000 a year, Grove said. As experience grows, the salary does too, as much $60,000 year or more.

The jobs are billed as "family sustaining," offering good money that can increase in a short time.

With the requisite job demands -- two weeks straight of 12-hour days, in all types of weather, lifting as much as 100 pounds several times daily and maneuvering heavy equipment -- youth and stamina are what the industry needs.

There is a "Troops to Roughnecks" program that Grove said focuses on junior military officers. "We've had tremendous success with them," he said, noting the skills of the military translate nicely to gas drilling.

Troops to Roughnecks offers accelerated training to separating service members, claiming that in five weeks, they can have IADC Safety Rig Pass and WellCAP certifications. The military edicts -- discipline, hard work, leadership -- are what makes these young people ideal for this work.

Getting in young is also what helps an experienced driller gain a long career. "Everyone knows workers with 20 or 30 years experience," Grove said.

All the workers on Rose are seasoned shale drillers from the South. Rowe and Hany are testaments to men with long gas-drilling careers.

Staying north, for now

Chesapeake still explores Pennsylvania for potential drill sites. But for now, it will stay in the Northern Tier, Grove said.

"As we do our exploration, and what we find when we drill, that will tell us where to go next," he said.

Whatever Pennsylvanians in general -- and Towandans in particular -- think of the gas folks, the gas folks like it here, at least the ones working on Rose.

"You have a pretty state here," said Rowe, commenting he's never seen a greener places in his life. "There are more pine trees here than hairs on the back of a dog."

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