What once seemed inevitable — hydraulic
fracturing for natural gas in New York state in general and Sullivan
County in particular — now seems much less certain.
Here's why:
Geologists, industry insiders and at least one top industry official
continue to insist that most, if not all, of the gas in the Marcellus
shale beneath Sullivan isn't worth drilling.
Bottom line?
"Given
all this, the rational thing for gas companies to do is what they're
doing — go west," says Mike Uretsky of nearby Pennsylvania, a member of
an energy task force established by the National Petroleum Council at
the request of Secretary of Energy Steven Chu.
One
of the nation's largest natural gas producers — Chesapeake, whose
official recently said Sullivan is "not a target zone" — just decided to
"cut our dry gas drilling to bare minimum levels."
The Delaware River Basin Commission, which was supposed to vote on its
regulations to allow drilling along the Delaware — bordering western
Sullivan — indefinitely postponed that vote.
The
head of the New York state agency that once vowed hydraulic fracturing,
or fracking, "can be done safely" in the state, now qualifies that
Department of Environmental Conservation position with a big "if" — as
in drilling will move forward in New York "only if "» the potential
risks to the public health and the environment can be adequately
mitigated."
Even Gov. Cuomo seems to be hedging
his bets, although the state surely needs the revenue drilling would
bring. When asked whether he would request money in the 2012 budget for
additional DEC staffers to regulate drilling, he recently said: "You
would not be hiring staff to regulate hydrofracking unless you believed
you were going ahead with hydrofracking. And we haven't made that
determination. So the budget won't anticipate hydrofracking approval."
All of this, and the industry itself says the proposed drilling
regulations in New York are "too restrictive and inhibit economic
growth," according to the Independent Oil and Gas Association of New
York. They're regulations that will likely become even stricter once the
DEC finalizes them after reading and responding to the more than 40,000
public comments.continue>>>>
No comments:
Post a Comment