Editorial boards here in Pennsylvania and throughout the nation continue to tout the benefits of “safe, job-creating shale development” which is having “a positive economic, environmental and national-security impact and will continue to for generations to come,” as the MSC’s Shari Williams laid out in today’s Philadelphia Daily News.

Here’s what newspaper editorials are saying:

  • Marcellus Shale Benefits are “Becoming Impossible to Deny”: Lower energy costs that fracking brings are providing a major boost to the US economy. According to the just-released study from IHS, in 2012 the natural-gas extraction process known as fracking helped: Support 2.1 million American jobs; Produce almost $75 billion in federal and state revenues; Generate $283 billion to GDP; and boost national per-household income by more than $1,200. … Even Gov. Cuomo admitted there are economic benefits to fracking when pro-fracking President Obama visited the state last month. Then again, he had to: The economic benefits are becoming impossible to deny. … The people of New York deserve better. … Fracking would bring jobs to people who badly need them and revenues to a state strapped for cash, while helping revive a battered upstate economy. (New York Post editorial, 9/14/13) 
  • Allegheny “County Must Proceed Carefully” with Safe Shale Development: Decision delay is a particular temptation for elected officials who don’t like to disappoint voters with strong feelings about an issue. Unfortunately, it is a temptation that has gotten the better of Allegheny County Councilwoman Barbara Daly Danko, a Democrat from Regent Square. On Tuesday night, Ms. Danko introduced legislation banning natural gas drilling in county parks until 2017. …The county also has an obligation to look at gas drilling as a source of possible revenue to help pay for services — and that includes in parks if it can be done safely and unobtrusively. … There is nothing magical about waiting for three years to decide this issue. … This is nothing more than kicking the can down the road. Indecision is not leadership. The county must proceed carefully, but that doesn’t have to take three years. (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editorial, 9/16/13)
  • NY’s Shale Moratorium Has No Environmental Justification: The Marcellus Shale has proven to be the most lucrative natural gas play in the U.S. … Interestingly, New York’s very own Department of Environmental Conservation website on Marcellus drilling says, “No known instances of groundwater contamination have occurred from previous horizontal drilling or hydraulic fracturing projects in New York.” A recent Department of Energy study has concluded that fracking chemicals do not taint drinking water. … A 2010 Pa. DEP report concluded that “no groundwater pollution or disruption of underground sources of drinking water have been attributed to hydraulic fracturing of deep gas formations.”… In Pennsylvania, according to the report, each well in the Marcellus Shale formation creates $5.5 million in direct economic benefits and 62 jobs, and the wells endanger no one. Pa.’s Department of Labor and Industry estimates that fracking in its part of the Marcellus created 72,000 jobs from the fourth quarter of 2009 to the first quarter of 2011, as New York’s job- and growth-killing moratorium got underway. New York’s moratorium on fracking has no environmental justification and is in fact a no-ratorium on job, income, and economic growth. (Investors Business Daily editorial, 9/12/13)
  • “Target: Natural Gas”: The oil and gas fracking boom increased household disposable income by $1,200 last year as lower energy costs flowed to consumers, according to a new study from IHS Global Insight. So Americans may want to know that President Obama’s nominee to chair the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) thinks natural gas is a “dead end.” … The supposedly independent agency oversees much of the gas business—from pipelines to export terminals to trading markets. … Now that [natural gas] is abundant and cheap, gas poses a threat to the dream of an economy run solely on mandated renewables. So the strategy is to use regulation to slowly make natural gas more expensive again. (Wall Street Journal editorial, 9/15/13)
  • Pa.’s Shale Impact Fee Boosts Local Communities: There has been debate about the worth of gas impact fees that the state Legislature chose over a gas drilling tax. But the bottom line is that a tax goes to Harrisburg and state coffers first. And from there, who knows where, as history shows. The natural gas impact fees are predominantly distributed locally in areas where natural gas drilling is most prevalent. … The benefit of that is underlined with important local decisions. … The most important point, however, is that the local people are getting to make these decisions. If we don’t like those decisions, we can let them know quite easily. There is much more transparency with the gas impact fee system that’s been implemented in the state. And beyond that transparency is the solitary fact that none of this decision making would be possible on the local level without the economic windfall created by the natural gas drilling industry in our region. (Williamsport Sun-Gazette editorial, 9/11/13)

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