GOP candidate for governor in New York takes on the fracking phobes

NY Post Editorial:

Marc Molinaro dropped the f-word Wednesday: “fracking.” The GOP gubernatorial hopeful said he’d back a “closely monitored” test of the practice.

Good for him. It’s past time someone revived the idea as a possible way to help upstaters left struggling by Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

In 2014, Cuomo banned fracking — the use of horizontal hydraulic fracturing to extract gas and oil from shale rock — in a sop to enviro-radicals. Yet it’s permitted nearly everywhere else in America and, indeed, is booming.

Over the past decade, the nation has seen a 60 percent spike in oil and natural-gas production.

And that has turned the world energy market on its head: Last year, the United States became a net exporter of gas for the first time in 60 years.

By 2022, the Energy Department predicts, America will be a net exporter of energy for the first time since 1953.

Fracking’s economic benefits are huge. Regions where it’s allowed have seen dramatic economic turnarounds.

And by reducing reliance on Middle East and Russian oil and gas, fracking has tilted the geopolitical balance.

New York, which sits on vast gas reserves in the Marcellus Shale, has missed out on these benefits, thanks to Cuomo’s ban — even as the economy upstate, where the shale is located, has stagnated.

And there’s no good health or environmental reason to ban it. Even the Obama Environmental Protection Agency found that contamination from fracking is rare.
Molinaro is pushing for a test program in the Southern Tier. It’s hard to see a downside — yet the upside can be considerable.
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It is a good sign that someone is willing to take on the energy Luddites who have been acting like the sky would fall if New York drilled wells for energy that is needed in the region.  The only thing I question about his proposal is the need for a test well.  Good grief.  Wells have been using fracking in Texas, North Dakota, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.  Cuomo has turned New AYork into a laggard by failing to exploit natural resources.