Gas pipeline operator Williams Partners LP plans to invest more than $1 billion and create 100 jobs in Marshall County over the next two years.

Tulsa, Okla.-based Williams and Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin announced the company's plans Thursday. The governor spoke in Moundsville at the Teletech building, where the company in the Marcellus shale industry plans to invest billions.

Williams Partners will lease existing space for its operations in Teletech's building in Marshall County as a result of the new jobs and expansion project.

"This will be a local field office for us. We will have employees that are based out of here, a lot of our field gathering assets and our gathering and processing facilities that we are building up here," said Frank Billings, Williams Partners vice presidents.

"We are extremely appreciative of Teletech's long-term investment in our community and their commitment to preserving approximately 250 jobs," said Jake Padlow, president of the Marshall County Commission said in a news release from Tomblin's office. "Their willingness to adapt and share space with the new Williams' office allows for new business development and growth in our area without losing great economic partners that call Marshall County home."

"Williams' commitment to Marshall County and the entire Northern Panhandle is an example of the growing opportunities Marcellus Shale development is bringing to West Virginia," Tomblin said in the release. "The investment and jobs will have lasting effects on the region as the workers needed will be operating and maintaining Williams' facilities and pipelines for many years to come."

Williams Partners currently operates two facilities in West Virginia, the Moundsville fractionator and the Fort Beeler, Marshall County gas processing plant. The company also has natural gas gathering lines and natural gas liquids pipelines. Additional construction on a new gas processing plant 5 miles west of the Fort Beeler plant began earlier this year.

With the investment come jobs, something Tomblin said the state of West Virginia needs every day.

"I think it's a very exciting day. These are the kind of jobs that are generational jobs, which means that a young person can come and work at Williams and spend their entire career here with one company," Tomblin, a Democrat, said.

For local leaders like the County Commission, they said the company pumping this much money into the local economy is great news for taxpayers.


Padlow said, "It means lowering taxes, again last year our values increased 200 billion dollars just in Marshall County, which allowed them to give this back to the tax payers this year and I hope in the years to come it will be more and more."


For Tomblin, he said announcements like this are another positive outlook for the state's ongoing boom in the Marcellus Shale industry. In fact, he said he's still hoping to get a cracker plant in the mountain industry.


"I feel we have a huge potential in our state. I still feel very confident that we will have a cracker in W.Va. and the stats say for every cracker located, will be about 12,000 new downstream jobs," Tomblin said.

According to the news release, since acquiring the Caiman Energy assets and staff in April, Williams Partners has hired an additional 74 new full-time positions in the area -- 49 of those positions filled by skilled local workers from the Ohio Valley. Williams currently has three construction jobs ongoing in Marshall County.