The use of hydraulic fracturing to develop Pennsylvania’s massive shale formations is dividing candidates running for the Democrats’ nomination to run for Pennsylvania governor.
Fracking became a hot issue after the Democratic State Committee voted 118-81 for a statewide moratorium on fracking. Following the June 15 vote, former Democrat Governor Ed Rendell told the Patriot-News newspaper the resolution was “very ill-advised.”
Rendell asserted that John Hanger and Kathleen McGinty, both former secretaries of the state Department of Environmental Protection, are the state’s “biggest environmentalists” and noted “both approved of fracking, permitted it and moved to put in place changes that have dramatically reformed the fracking process.”
Drilling, he said has “created jobs and huge economic investment in Pennsylvania. And it’s helped create wealth in the poorest areas of Pennsylvania.”
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Two other Democrat candidates for governor, U.S. Rep. Allyson Schwartz, D-Montgomery County, and former state Revenue Secretary Tom Wolf said they oppose the resolution. But two other candidates, state Treasurer Bob McCord and Max Myers, a pastor, support it.
The bottom line is the race for the Democratic Party’s gubernatorial nomination will be anything but boring. Most state’s environmental groups passionately oppose fracking while many labor unions and business groups support it with enthusiasm. Urban area voters, many concerned about possibility of drilling in their backyard, are generally opposed, but many rural voters who profited from royalties and leases support it.
There’s plenty of time for it to all play out: the primary isn’t until May 20, 2014.
You make your environmental rules and then you follow them. You can’t afford to allow the media and lobbyists to cause you to rewrite the rules when your state is facing a huge opportunity. Part of the reason that PA still has opportunities is that NY decided in 2009 to rewrite their environmental laws covering hydraulic fracturing. Now NY property owners are paying higher taxes because of mineral wealth under their feet that they are not allowed to access. In TX they get natural gas with the oil and have relatively short distances to existing collection pipelines. If PA backs away from the table, TX will make up the slack.
I want to know what the opponents would say to the thousands of people already working those gas fields. “Sorry, but I would prefer that you be unemployed.” I wonder if they’d take that argument on the road into places like Bradford.