New York

Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | New York | Regulation | Statewide NY

MDN Hits the Road for the NY DEC Hearings at Tribeca
November 30, 2011November 29, 2011

The last two ~~circus shows~~ public hearings sponsored by the New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) on proposed changes to draft shale gas drilling regulations will be held on Wednesday (today) in New York City at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center (Manhattan) from 1-4 pm and again from 6-9 pm. MDN editor Jim Willis is attending the 1 pm session (if he can get in!). A full report will follow on Thursday or Friday.

Meanwhile, a crowd of some 500 pro- and anti-drilling advocates showed up on Tuesday in Loch Sheldrake (Sullivan County), NY for the next to last pair of hearings. See today’s Story Links for early coverage from Loch Sheldrake.

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Broome County | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | New York | Regulation | Statewide NY

Binghamton DEC Hearing Draws Big & Loud Crowd
November 20, 2011November 20, 2011

Unfortunately MDN editor Jim Willis was not in Binghamton for the Nov. 17 DEC hearing on the newest revisions to the draft drilling regulations that would finally allow shale gas drilling in the state. However, there was plenty of media coverage of the event, which drew more than 1,000 people to the Forum Theatre in downtown Binghamton.

The Nov. 17 hearing was the second of four scheduled public hearings on the new regulations. The final two will be at the end of November, one in Loch Sheldrake (Sullivan County) and one in New York City.

Reporting on the Binghamton hearing from the hometown Press & Sun-Bulletin:

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Broome County | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Meetings | New York | Public Opinion | Regulation

Binghamton DEC Hearing will be Ground Zero This Week
November 14, 2011November 14, 2011

This week will be important for the effort to get shale gas drilling moving in New York State. The state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) is conducting a series of four public hearings nominally to accept comments on the most recent changes to the draft drilling regulations, also known as the SGEIS (Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement). MDN says “nominally” because each of the four events will be used by both those for and against drilling to try and show their side has the most support.

One of the four hearings, in Binghamton on Thursday of this week, is likely to be the largest hearing outside of the New York City hearing later this month. MDN has received several email notices from landowner groups in favor of drilling, and from one group opposed. Both say similar things: These hearings are vitally important.

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Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | New York | Regulation | Statewide NY

Will NY be Too Expensive to Drill in the Marcellus?
November 14, 2011November 14, 2011

Yesterday’s Buffalo News has an excellent analysis for the prospects of shale gas drilling in New York, given New York’s extreme delays and proposed restrictive drilling regulations. MDN is a supporter of drilling in New York and has nothing but best wishes for landowners in our home state. But the stark reality, as we’ve been pointing out, is that “if you build it, they will come” makes for a nice movie, but doesn’t necessarily translate into reality for drilling in NY.

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Industrywide Issues | New York | Public Opinion | Statewide NY

Sixteen NY Community Groups Unite to Support Gas Drilling
November 11, 2011November 11, 2011

A new organization called Clean Growth Now has formed to support shale gas drilling in New York State. The interesting and newsworthy aspect of this new organization is that it is not drilling industry-backed, but rather made up of 16 community organizations that believe shale gas drilling is safe and will provide an economic and jobs windfall for the state.

From the Clean Growth Now press release issued yesterday:

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Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | New York | Regulation | Statewide NY

Joe Martens Says NY Will Vote “No” on DRBC Drilling Rules
November 10, 2011November 10, 2011

As MDN reported yesterday, the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) is set to vote on new drilling rules to allow limited drilling in the DRBC jurisdiction on Nov. 21 (see this MDN story). The DRBC has five voting members: New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, and the federal government.

According to NY State DEC Commissioner Joe Martens, New York will be a “no” vote on the new regulations at that meeting, no doubt to the delight of anti-drilling groups. His reasoning?…

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Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | New York | Regulation | Statewide NY

IOGA NY Strongly Worded Letter to DEC Commissioner Martens
November 8, 2011November 3, 2012

The Independent Oil and Gas Association of New York (IOGA NY), after studying the new draft drilling rules issued by the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) wrote a letter to DEC Commissioner Joe Martens and Gov. Andrew Cuomo on September 2 stating that the new rules, as written, are not acceptable if the state wants there to be any shale gas drilling. A copy of the 15-page letter with attachments (31 pages total) was obtained by Gannett News and can be downloaded below.

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Industrywide Issues | New York | Statewide NY | Taxation

NY DEC Panel Quietly Considers New Shale Gas Drilling Tax
November 7, 2011November 7, 2011

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, while holding up a release of new drilling regulations, has “quietly” begun considering different taxation scenarios for when and if shale gas drilling actually begins. Last month, the DEC sent 7 of the 18 members of the Hydraulic Fracturing Advisory Panel three separate charts with scenarios for taxing shale gas production. The members receiving the charts sit on a subcommittee charged with figuring out a way to pay for additional staff and resources that would be needed by the DEC and other state agencies once drilling begins.

Bear in mind under existing New York State law there is already an ad valorem tax (property tax) that will yield a lot of money from shale gas production, but all of that money stays in the local community, going to the town, county and school districts. The DEC Advisory Committee is tasked with figuring out how to grab a piece of the drilling revenue pie in order to fund their own expansion as they ramp up to handle the demands of new drilling activity.

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Broome County | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | New York

Water & Energy Development Forum in Binghamton on Weds
November 7, 2011November 7, 2011

MDN received the following invitation for readers that live within driving distance of Binghamton, NY to a forum discussing water issues in shale gas drilling, on Wednesday, Nov. 9th:

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Broome County | Energy Companies | Inflection Energy | Lease & Royalty Payments | New York

Broome County NY Landowners Receive Money to Stay in Lease
November 4, 2011November 4, 2011

At least one energy firm has voted with its pocketbook that drilling will come, eventually, to New York State. Inflection Energy has just paid landowners in the Town of Maine (Broome County), NY $1,000 per acre to not bail out of the previous deal they signed.

In 2010, Inflection signed a deal that Maine landowners would receive a $6,000 per acre signing bonus over eight years plus 20 percent royalties. The initial payment was $1,000 per acre, the rest due after New York starts issuing permits for drilling. Problem is, those permits have not been issued and under the terms of the deal, landowners would have the right to vacate their leases and find a better deal later. So to keep them in the deal until permits are finally forthcoming, Inflection paid an additional $1,000 per acre (one-time payout) stipulating the landowners will not cancel their leases.

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Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | New York | Regulation | Statewide NY

NY Hydraulic Fracturing Advisory Panel Member Speaks Out
November 2, 2011November 2, 2011

In July, New York Commissioner of the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) Joe Martens announced the formation of a Hydraulic Fracturing Advisory Panel to make recommendations to the DEC on how to oversee, monitor and enforce new shale drilling regulations in the state (see this MDN story). The initial panel of 13 members was heavily tilted to anti-drillers, with a few pro-drillers thrown on to make it look good. In August, Martens appointed an additional five members (all pro-drilling) to the panel, to provide balance and give landowners a voice. Those new members include:

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Cattaraugus County | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | New York

Private Property Rights in Allegany State Park Threatened
November 1, 2011March 24, 2012

Allegany State Park is New York’s largest state park at 67,000 acres. The park is located approximately 60 miles south of Buffalo on the border of New York and Pennsylvania in Cattaraugus County. Before being designated a state park in 1921, more than 200 oil wells were drilled in the area, including the very first oil well completed in New York State in 1864. The state created the park by purchasing surface rights from landowners in the area, but many of the landowners retained the subsurface rights and oil drilling continued in the park for a number of years, until energy companies moved on to more lucrative locations.

Oil drilling has not happened in the park for many years, but now with gas drilling a real possibility, state authorities who want to “protect” the park are making moves to force those who legally own subsurface rights to either register their interest or lose it. That is, the state wants to forcibly take private property rights away from those who legally own it.

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Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | New York | Regulation | Statewide NY

How Will NY Gov Cuomo Handle the Fracking Mutiny?
October 31, 2011October 31, 2011

An editorial in yesterday’s New York Post says that New York DEC Commissioner Joe Martens is leading a mutiny against Gov. Andrew Cuomo on the matter of allowing hydraulic fracturing to move forward in the state and asks the question, Is Gov. Cuomo up to the task of putting down the mutiny? Good question!

The editorial begins this way:

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Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | New York | Otsego County | Statewide NY

Gas Drilling Debate Gets Personal in Cooperstown, NY
October 31, 2011October 31, 2011

A New York Times article slanted to be anti-drilling, but nonetheless comes out pretty balanced overall, examines the personal nature of the debate over fracking in New York State by examining the neighbor against neighbor conflict in Cooperstown, NY.

From the article:

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Meetings | New York | Statewide NY

Any Pro-Drilling NY Landowners Interested in Debating?
October 31, 2011October 31, 2011

MDN received the following invitation for New York landowners who support drilling to participate in a debate in Nyack, NY (near New York City) on Dec. 1st:

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Broome County | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | New York | Regulation | Statewide NY

The Kooky Things Anti-Drillers Say
October 28, 2011October 28, 2011

An excellent commentary in today’s New York Post by Abby Wisse Schachter addresses the fear mongering and just plain kookiness heard from anti-drillers. From the opening:

New York state just announced another delay in what has become a more-than-four-year process to approve widespread natural-gas drilling. Over that time, the state has lost tens of thousands of jobs and millions of dollars of business — and the opposition to drilling has only gotten more entrenched and radical.

Gov. Cuomo should not be swayed by such hysteria.

An Oct. 6 New York Policy Forum panel on gas drilling is a case in point. At it, Binghamton Mayor Matthew Ryan participated in a discussion of hydro-fracking, the process of extracting natural gas from shale rock. He argued that New York doesn’t need natural gas to power its economic future.

“You can do other things … You can save so much energy just by switching to wood pellets,” Ryan claimed. “If you combine that with retrofitting all the rural properties … you’ll produce thousands of jobs.”

Wood pellets. What century does Ryan think this is?*

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