ALBANY (AP) – The New York Assembly has approved a temporary ban on hydraulic fracturing.
The measure would ban hydraulic fracturing in deep, horizontal natural gas wells until May 15, 2011. It’s meant to allow more time for the Department of Environmental Conservation to finish its review and new permitting guidelines.
The moratorium has already passed in the state Senate and now goes to Gov. David Paterson. The governor said last week that opponents of the drilling to reach deep, lucrative gas deposits raised enough of an argument “to thwart us from going forward at this time.”
Central New York Landowners Coalition President Brian Conover said this morning that the moratorium is “toothless” and “politically motivated.”
“Since the DEC has not even released its Supplemental Generic Impact Statement, they can’t drill now anyway! This just proves that the moratorium is politically based not scientifically based,” he said.
The CNYLC represents about 200,000 acres in Chenango and western Otsego county and has been actively marketing its lease to energy companies.
Anti-drilling activists are pushing for a completed withdrawal of the draft environmental review plan, called SGEIS. The DEC’s de facto moratorium on high-volume hydraulic fracturing in shale formations has been in effect for the past two years. The DEC suffered a set-back further with the firing of manager Pete Grannis after a memo he wrote was leaked to the press.
According to the DEC memo: “DEC is in the weakest position that it has been in since it was created 40 years ago. The staffing and funding losses over the past 2.5 years, combined with increased legislative mandates from the federal government and state legislature, have created the perfect management storm. Many of our programs are hanging by a thread. The public would be shocked to learn how thin we are in many areas.”
Paterson is expected to sign the bill.
The Independent Oil & Gas Association of New York and the American Petroleum Institute (API) decried the State Assembly for its passage of the bill. According to API Senior Economist Sara Banaszak, hydraulic fracturing is a critical process for accessing the nation’s domestic natural gas resources.
In other natural gas news:
• On Nov. 17, the Broome County legislature rejected, for the second time, a plan to lease county lands for drilling.  
• On the same day, Pittsburgh became the first city in the nation to ban drilling outright.
• The day after Thanksgiving, Governor Paterson acknowledged the role ordinary citizens have played in defeating dangerous drilling saying “This is a very good example of public participation. Our DEC … originally ruled that hydraulic fracturing would not affect the water quality in the area, but we’ve received additional information and have not been able to come to a conclusion as to whether or not this is a good idea … We’re not going to risk public safety or water quality…  At this point, I would say that the hydraulic fracturing opponents have raised enough of an argument to thwart us going forward at this time.”