As fracking took off here over the past eight years, so did Gary Bowers’s business supplying everything from Gatorade to replacement valves to crews drilling into natural-gas reserves a mile underground. This year, however, the good times at his firm, Producers Supply Co., came to a screeching halt. Since January, the company’s monthly sales have declined by more than half, as the number of drilling rigs operating in the Marcellus Shale has plummeted to 70 from 131 at the end of last year. “This thing is spiraling down, and we don’t know how long it’s going to last,” said Mr. Bowers, who expects the rig count to keep falling. “It’s new territory for Appalachia.” The economic pain from lower oil and gas prices is spreading to small towns and businesses across Pennsylvania and parts of Ohio and West Virginia that had been riding a wave of prosperity from […]