NORWICH – Shale drilling may still be banned in New York, but the number of vendors and job seekers at the first shale gas jobs expo held in Binghamton Wednesday told a more economically uplifting story.

The list of 45 vendors lining the Broome Community College Center included Payne’s Cranes, Inc. of Bainbridge and FS Lopke Rock Products, which operates a gravel bed in Oxford. Other vendors with close ties to Chenango County were the Leatherstocking Gas Company, LLC and the Joint Landowners Coalition of New York (JLCNY).

A handful of local natural gas development proponents attended the event to share business contacts, including Bryant La Tourette of Rapid Reproductions in Oxford, founding member of the Oxford Landowner’s Group, which later merged with the Central New York Landowners Coalition and is now part of the JLCNY; Chenango County Natural Gas Consultant Steven Palmatier and Cliff Tamsett of Norwich, who is a consultant with GasTem USA, the company currently developing a conventional sandstone well site in Guilford.

For most of the afternoon, a line of about 40 to 50 people long waited to submit their resumes to a representative of Chesapeake Energy. The large conglomerate holds hundreds of leases in Chenango County from which it hopes to one day drill for gas within the Marcellus and Utica shales. The booth for Cabot Oil & Gas of Pennsylvania was also a hotbed of activity.