LACKAWANNA COUNTY, Pa. — Zoey Wright spent a lot of her time last summer at a natural gas well in Susquehanna County.
"There are pipes under the ground, and you're pulling your gas out of the well heads. And it's going underground over to our GPUs (gas production units) that are going to separate the gas and the water, and then after it goes to that, it's going to be sent off to wherever they need it," Wright explained.
A well pad needs maintenance to make sure that's happening, and it involves skills that Wright, 17, learned how to do before graduating high school.
"We'll go through our route throughout the day and then if there was emergency calls or pad shutdowns, we'd head over to those. We'd have multiple different things to get done throughout the day."
She knows how to handle these mechanical systems in the frost because of her time in welding class at Susquehanna County Career and Technology Center.
Wright has been interested in welding since she was young.
"One year for Christmas, I got a welder. So, I was like, you know, I need to learn more about how to do this and not just learn it on my own."
She splits her time between Lackawanna Trail, Lackawanna College, and the well pad, where she was recruited to work on the wells with Coterra Energy.
"A little concerned about it at first, being how small I am and that, but I got the hang of it pretty quick, and I was taught a lot of stuff over the summer."
She took time out of her busy schedule to show Newswatch 16 the basics of welding.
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