The state Department of Environmental Conservation is on course to kill any hope of a New York natural-gas boom with the death of 1,000 stalls.
The DEC is taking too long, and paying too much heed to disingenuous critics, in issuing rules to allow the key process of “fracking” — a k a hydraulic fracturing, which involves forcing water and chemicals at high pressure into shale-rock formations to release natural gas.
Last week, the DEC announced it’s extending for another 30 days the public-comment period on its proposed fracking rules. This, after already stretching the period from 60 days to 90 days — and after many hearings have turned out more like Occupy Wall Street protests than a sober assessment of safe and effective drilling rules.
The DEC’s latest delay dismayed the pro-fracking side. “While today’s extension of the comment period may seem inconsequential to some, it is in fact a continuation of the existing four-year ban on economic opportunity for upstate New York,” declared Brad Gill, executive director of the Independent Oil & Gas Association of New York.
It’s not just industry.
“New Yorkers need energy to live and work, and tapping into the vast potential in the Marcellus and Utica shales will help our economy by reducing the high cost of energy,” said Dean Norton, New York Farm Bureau president.
Robert Nichols, a Steuben County legislator and a town supervisor in Tuscarora, chimed in, “We’re hurting for jobs. We need this type of activity to create jobs and put people to work.”
The DEC claims it wants to give everyone a chance to voice their concerns about the drilling rules. But offering so-called experts like actor Mark Ruffalo the platform to demand that New York abandon natural-gas drilling in favor of solar power is a waste of time.
Nor does it do anything about the problems with the DEC rules. Its proposed regulations — including severe limits on where fracking can be done and a complex and drawn-out permitting process — seem designed to discourage investment by major oil and gas players.
Geologist John Conrad says the rules would make New York uncompetitive in gas drilling. “The DEC claims that . . . only 15 percent of the Marcellus Shale play [would be] inaccessible to drilling,” he explains, “but I’ve looked at areas currently leased by oil and gas operators, and as much as 100 percent of a tract can fall under those restrictions.”
Meanwhile, the DEC wants operators to apply to the state Department of Transportation for “road use” around any drill site — rather than just working with local government. And they might have to do that after getting a drilling permit. More time, more red tape and more risk that you won’t get all the necessary permits after months of time and money for lawyers.
Cathy Ann Kenny of the New York State Petroleum Council, a trade group, warns that, with the rules as written, “I can’t anticipate that [gas drilling] would happen to the extent that it is happening in Pennsylvania because it wouldn’t be as profitable.” She says companies have cut back or closed their New York operations.
When Cuomo took office, his message to the DEC and Commissioner Joe Martens was clear: Get rules for fracking done right, but get them done. Instead, the DEC has taken a kitchen-sink approach toward the rules: It’s addressing every “fear” that the ideologues can dream up — making fracking so “safe” that little of it will get done.
Yet fracking is under way with great effectiveness, huge economic benefits and no environmental destruction in Pennsylvania, Nebraska, Texas and elsewhere. Instead of more hearings, maybe Martens and Cuomo could visit Pennsylvania to witness firsthand the full restaurants and overbooked hotels thanks to drilling — that is, to see the opportunity they’re now poised to deny New York.
Abby Wisse Schachter authors The Post’s politics blog Capitol Punishment (nypost.com/blogs/capitol).