New York needs fracking: Demonstrators at a pro-fracking rally in Albany last month, before Gov. Cuomo’s latest stall on the crucial issue. (AP)
Last week’s news that the state Department of Environmental Conservation will miss a Nov. 29 deadline to release regulations guiding future natural-gas exploration in New York was another blow to a beleaguered industry — an industry, by the way, that has operated safely in New York for decades and isn’t asking for a dime of public money to expand here.
This latest delay is necessary, according to the state, for three “experts” chosen by the state Health Department to review the potential health impacts. Never mind that these experts have already made public statements that suggest a bias against natural-gas development: The sole purpose of environmental regulation is to evaluate all potential environmental impacts — including human health. Now New York’s belt-and-suspenders approach has yet another set of suspenders.
In other words, after four years and four months of evaluating the potential environmental impacts, this latest delay is unnecessary.
As I’ve said to the governor, our member companies are now well past the tipping point, and our trust in our state government now exhausted.
The impacts of the delay are real.Just three years ago, our industry supported 5,000 jobs in upstate New York, due largely to the ongoing exploration of vertical wells across the Southern Tier. It’s unclear what the real jobs total is today, but drilling activity is sharply falling.
According to the DEC, the agency issued 670 permits for vertical wells in 2008. That number dropped to 580 in 2009, 470 in 2010 and 254 in 2011. This year (as of Nov. 13), DEC has issued only 152 vertical permits. New York is not an attractive place for our industry to do business.
Our companies — good employers with good jobs paying good salaries — have labored to maintain a presence in New York during this prolonged delay, but many have lost employees and opportunity to other states.
And for no good environmental reason. If the devastating effects claimed by the most radical fracking opponents were real, the marching, chanting and drum circles would be justified. But industry and the environment are coexisting all across the rest of the nation, thanks to strict but reasonable regulations.
Meanwhile, the benefits of natural gas use are real. Consider this:
* Domesticenergy production is putting Americans back to work, shepherding a US manufacturing resurgence and improving the environment.
* EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has indicated on multiple occasions that natural-gas production using hydraulic fracturing is not resulting in groundwater contamination. The EPA even praises hydraulic fracturing and asserts, “natural gas plays a key role in our nation’sclean energy future.”
* The US Energy Information Administration on Aug. 1 reported that the nation’sCO2emissions were at a20-year low, mainly thanks to increased use of natural gas in power production.
* Mayor Bloomberg in August released areportindicating that increased natural gas use was in the best interest of the city’s environmental and economic future and would “improve air quality and save lives.”
As wewait, other states are experiencing great benefits. In July, Pennsylvania’s Department of Labor and Industry reported that Marcellus Shale-related employment in that state has grown by 238,000 jobs since 2008 — and core industry jobs have an average annual salary of more than $81,000.
In Ohio, Gov. John Kasich said,“If we can get that Marcellus Shale and if it can yield a significant amount of gas — oh, it will be a godsend for our state.” That was in 2010. Today, the state is allowing Marcellus shale-gas development as New York waits and continues to study science that has already been settled elsewhere.
This latest delay won’t yield greater understanding of potential health impacts; rather, it will feed the anti-drilling rhetoric and prompt even more politically motivated actions.
We were under the impression that science would inform New York’s final determination on fracking. Unfortunately, every delay gives the anti-drilling more opportunity to plant seeds of doubt — seeds that so far have consistently failed to take root into real, scientifically based concern.
On an Albany radio program last week, Gov. Cuomo said, “People need jobs and people don’t want to be poisoned.” That’s a false choice when you look at other gas-producing states and see a healthy environment and economy. In New York, the only thing poisoning job creation and business prosperity is more delay.
Brad Gill is executive director of the Independent Oil & Gas Association of New York.