The Wall Street Journal reports that Ohio has been enjoying a massive infusion of hundreds of millions of dollars, thanks to the development of the Utica Shale. It goes without saying that capital expenditures on such a scale have generated tens of thousands of new jobs.

Job creation is one of the principal tenets of the Pickens Plan, and nowhere is this more evident than in the Buckeye State where energy infrastructure developers such as MarkWest Utica have committed to major investments deals. MarkWest signed an agreement with Gulfport Energy to develop infrastructure in the Ohio Valley. Cheseapeake Energy and M3 Midstream have announced a $900 million commitment to develop midstream infrastructure.

“We put $700 million into West Virginia in three years and we paid $67 million in tax revenue,” said Stephen Arata, an executive vice president with the private equity-backed midstream developer Caiman Energy. “We think it’s going to be very similar, just at a larger scale, in Ohio.”

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