One of the nation’s leading energy-industry executives is blasting Gov. Cuomo for denying upstate New Yorkers thousands of jobs with his “shortsighted’’ refusal to permit drilling for natural gas.
American Petroleum Institute President Jack Gerard also accused Cuomo of hiding “for far too long’’ behind the “excuse’’ of conducting a health study on the safety of fracking for natural gas when its safety has already been proven in some 30 states across the nation.
“I think it’s shortsighted, I think it’s unfortunate because it hurts his state. It hurts economic development in his state,’’ Gerard told The Post.
“We need to go back to facts and reality,’’ he continued. “The director of the [Environmental Protection Agency] . . . the secretary of energy today, the secretary of the interior today, have all reaffirmed the fact that hydraulic fracturing can be done in a safe and effective way that protects the workforce and protects the environment,’’ continued Gerard, whose institute represents virtually all major gas and oil companies in the nation, including ExxonMobil and Shell, and sets the industry standards for the equipment used in the energy field.
A spokesman for Gerard, Reid Porter, told The Post that neither Cuomo nor the state Department of Health, which the governor claims has been conducting a health study on fracking for nearly a year, has sought any information about the drilling technique from API or any of its member companies.
While Cuomo claims he’s trying to make New York business-friendly, an authoritative oil-and-gas industry source involved in Pennsylvania-based energy production told The Post the governor has repeatedly rejected offers of information on fracking from leading energy companies, which are prepared to invest hundreds of millions of dollars on gas exploration in the state.
What’s more, the source said, Cuomo has turned down offers to tour ongoing fracking operations just across the New York border in Pennsylvania and, in at least one case, “insulted” a major energy- company president by not even responding to a formal letter requesting a meeting on the gas-drilling issue with the governor.
“Cuomo says he wants New York to be business-friendly, and this is how he treats the president of a leading international company?” asked a second source.
Cuomo, the target of repeated threats of political retaliation from environmental activists, including his former brother-in-law, Robert Kennedy Jr., has repeatedly refused for more than three years to approve fracking in the gas-rich Marcellus Shale region of the Southern Tier — even as President Obama backed the practice and state Environmental Conservation Commissioner Joseph Martens proclaimed it could be done safely.
Last February, just as a final report on the safety of fracking was due to be released by Martens’ agency, Cuomo abruptly announced that his health commissioner, Dr. Nirav Shah, would conduct a last-minute study, which Shah promised would be completed in “weeks.’’
Since then, both Cuomo and Shah have repeatedly refused to say when the report would be finished.
While energy-company executives initially believed Cuomo would stick to his campaign promise to make a decision based on the “science and the facts,’’ they’ve long since concluded that political considerations — including a possible run for the presidency in 2016 — have determined his stance.
That view was reinforced by two developments last week: Cuomo’s aides proposed a new energy plan for the state’s future that, unlike previous plans, made no mention of fracking in the Southern Tier, and Cuomo himself named former New York City Councilman James Gennaro, a fierce fracking opponent, as a deputy commissioner at Martens’ environmental agency.