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New steel jobs touted
By GRACE WYLER
brookfield
Governor Ted Strickland joined local business leaders and politicians Friday to celebrate the creation of new steel jobs in Trumbull County.
They attended a ribbon-cutting for the new TMK IPSCO plant here.
“Our country was literally built using Valley steel,” Strickland said. “What we are celebrating today is good news for the Valley.”
Strickland thanked representatives from TMK IPSCO, including chairman Piotr Galitzine and president Vicki Avril, for their confidence in the community.
Strickland was joined by Galitzine, U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan of Niles, D-17th, and Ohio Department of Development Director Lisa Patt-McDaniel for the ceremony and a tour of the plant Friday.
The new factory, located in the former Sharon Tube facility on Parkway Drive, produces steel-tube connections used in natural-gas exploration. The company will invest $10 million in the project, which will employ 50 people initially and eventually 120.
The company was looking at several sites in Northeast Ohio and western Pennsylvania, Walt Good, vice president of economic development for the Youngstown-Warren Regional Chamber of Commerce, said.
“It was very, very competitive,” Good said. “This is a big win for Trumbull County.”
TMK IPSCO, based in Illinois, is a branch of a Russian corporation.
TMK IPSCO, the world’s largest pipe manufacturer, chose the location of the new plant because of its proximity to the Marcellus Shale, Galitzine said.
The shale is an ancient — and largely untapped — natural gas formation under eastern Ohio and much of Pennsylvania, West Virginia and New York. New technology and drilling techniques have led to an explosion of development of the Marcellus Shale.
“The Marcellus Shale is one of America’s national treasures,” Galitzine said. “We are at the beginning of this development.”
The development of the Marcellus Shale is in its early stages and will continue to grow, Galitzine said.
“This [plant] will help develop the Marcellus Shale into one of the biggest natural gas sources in the world,” he said. “These jobs will be here as long as the Marcellus Shale is here.”