The United States is on the verge of an economic “renaissance” thanks to abundant shale gas — and that demands a smart energy policy, Dow Chemical CEO Andrew Liveris said Thursday. “The discovery of shale gas is an American manufacturing renaissance if handled well,” he said on CNBC’s “The Kudlow Report.” “It makes America a low-cost jurisdiction for any energy-intensive manufacturing of the value-add kind. One dollar of gas can create $8 to $9 of the value-add kind.” Earlier, Dow announced it was building a $1.7 billion ethylene production plant in Freeport, Texas, scheduled to open in 2017. The facility is part of Dow Chemical’s $4 billion plan to expand production of ethylene and propylene, products of shale gas extracted via fracking methods. The company estimated the Texas project would employ up to 4,800 construction workers. Liveris also said that the plant would create 3,000 to 4,000 new jobs, as well as 35,000 indirect jobs. “We’re still short of being the America we can be,” he said. “But we’re on our way, thankfully, due to the American oil and gas industry giving us cheap and abundant energy.”

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Businesses ranging from wildlife consultants to titans of the oil and gas industry will gather in Binghamton for New York's first shale gas job fair, buoyed by hopes that state regulators will lift a four-year-old ban and start permitting hydraulic fracturing this year. "I'm optimistic in saying the industry will be working in New York state fairly soon under some very well-thought-out regulations and oversight," said Broome County Legislator Steve Herz, an organizer of the event at Broome Community College on Wednesday. But even while shale gas drilling has been on hold in New York, companies and workers in the state's Southern Tier have benefited from the gas boom 20 miles south of Binghamton in Pennsylvania. "Neil Guiles of Vestal Asphalt is a perfect example of a New York company benefiting from what's happening in Pennsylvania," Herz said. "His business has tripled and he's made major capital investments." While thousands of wells have been drilled in Pennsylvania since the Marcellus Shale gas boom began about five years ago, New York hasn't allowed development to proceed in its part of the gas-rich shale formation that also underlies parts of Ohio and West Virginia.

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Central Pennsylvania counties are embracing Marcellus Shale impact fee ordinances in case natural gas drilling ever migrates to the midstate from the main drilling activity in the northern and western counties. Commissioners March 28 approved an ordinance. Lebanon County this week also intended to pass an impact fee ordinance, Commissioner Jo Ellen Litz said. The county has seen indicators that gas drilling soon could make its way there, she said. Meanwhile, Perry County commissioners on March 26 passed an ordinance as well. 

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