CORNING – Piping natural gas is all about cutting back the cost of fuel. With today’s low price for gas, why wouldn’t businesses and school districts want to pay approximately 75 percent less to heat and cool their buildings and to power up machinery?

That’s the question posed by Corning Natural Gas President and Chief Executive Office Mike German. Corning, in conjunction with Mirabito Holding Inc., proposes to build a pipeline from the pending well site in Guilford – and others if they are drilled – to the Sidney and Bainbridge communities.

But instead of progress, German said he finds himself drowning in the quagmire of a drilling war. When the pipeline proposal came through the town of Coventry last year, droves of hydraulic fracturing opponents came out in opposition.

“We think we are stumbling somewhere back to the middle now, and think we have made progress. We just want to legally build a utility and offer lower priced energy,” he said.