I just got back from listening to you at the DEC’s hearing in New York City yesterday. You turned out 800 strong to object to the DEC’s proposed regulation of hydraulic fracturing in the State of New York. Many who testified cited familiar complaints about possible water and air pollution caused by hydraulic fracturing and use of toxic chemicals. The industry is already working on recycling, non-toxic chemical formulations and zero emissions. It is done in environmentally sensitive locations like offshore and the Arctic. I’m willing to bet that it can be done for shale, too.
Once the testimony got going, it was really quite a show. One objector sang a song he wrote about pure water (pure water, sweet water). Another organized a reading in unison. The crowd held their arms straight over their heads and flapped their fingers like birds if they agreed with the speaker. If they disagreed, the flapping fingers turned into claws (what’s up with this?). Gasland celebrity Josh Fox addressed the crowd. According to him, high volume hydraulic fracturing cannot be regulated. It must be banned, and New York will be epicenter of an effort to reach across the United States. I do agree with part of what Mr. Fox said. It may be possible to stop hydraulic fracturing and shale development in the State of New York, but I think the likely cause will be delay and uncertainty. New York’s reserves may be left in the ground because no one is going to need the gas.
In the United States there is so much shale with so much gas, that gas prices just keep going down. States realize that shale reserves which don’t get developed now, may not get developed. They are actually competing with each other for shale investment because they want the jobs even if New York does not. The Pennsylvania House just passed a sweeping bill (HB1950) to regulate natural gas drilling at the State level, which will preempt and supersede Municipal regulation heretofore in effect. This makes it easier for the industry to work in Pennsylvania. Going forward there will be a single set of regulations instead of thousands of sets of them. Pennsylvania expects to collect a modest impact fee from the industry in return for using their infrastructure to develop the shale. The Pennsylvania Senate and House are hotly debating the appropriate fee level because if they set it too high they know that the industry has lots of other locations to drill. Ohio welcomes the natural gas industry and has declared itself open for business. West Virginia sees shale as salvation from an economy that is excessively reliant on coal. Plus, in West Virginia the industry is experimenting with using acid mine runoff in hydraulic fracturing, which solves a nagging environmental problem.
How do you square massive development underway in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, and North Dakota with what is going on in New York? Is the rest of the United States just plain stupid? Well no, there’s nothing in the water that makes New Yorkers smarter, although New Yorkers are highly suspicious of anything in their water. I agree. No one wants to pollute the water! Yet there is an element of arrogance and intolerance that was markedly on display at the hearing. The one person I saw at the hearing, who tried to speak in favor of shale development, a representative of the utility alliance, had the microphone ripped away from him. He was shouted down by the crowd, until the commissioner stopped the proceedings, and the parliamentarian stepped off the stage to forcibly restrain the protestor. The crowd should have listened to what the utility representative tried to say.
The first point was that utilities depend on stable, low price, long lived fuel sources in order to supply uninterrupted electricity at low prices. Developing a local gas supply will guarantee that New York has low, stable electricity prices in the future. Con Edison’s electricity rate in New York City averages 26 cents/KWH[1], which is more than twice what it is in other places. One reason electricity is expensive is because Con Edison has not had a credible, local source of low priced natural gas. Changing that will attract employers and bring jobs.
The second point was that many old buildings, particularly in New York City, burn fuel oil for heat. (It’s actually worse than that. Many buildings heat with bunker fuel, which is the grade just above asphalt.) The oil comes directly from OPEC. It is expensive, dirty and needs to be replaced. It is also cheap, and many users will wait as long as they possibly can to make the investment to phase it out.
In April the Mayor’s office proposed a master plan for New York City[2] which will phase out fuel oil by 2030. The plan acknowledges that fuel oil causes more air pollution than all the trucks and automobiles combined. The black soot which dusts the buildings and window sills is from fuel oil. Even increased asthma rates are attributable to fuel oil. Quoting directly from page 129, … “Currently, 415 City schools—roughly one-third of all schools—burn Numbers 4 or 6 heating oil, including 232 schools that burn Number 6. Many of these are in neighborhoods where the asthma rates are more than three times higher than the national average.”
So, why are people in New York City protesting natural gas? Leave the window open for a day. Then we’ll talk again.
Till next time,
Energy Mom
New York, New York
New York, New York
[1] Energy Information Agency; Table 6. Class of Ownership, Number of Consumers, Sales, Revenue, and Average Retail Price by State and Utility: Residential Sector, 2010, Run Date 11/3/2011, G2028
[1] PLaNYC, A Greener, Greater New York, April 2011, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, http://nytelecom.vo.llnwd.net/o15/agencies/planyc2030/pdf/planyc_2011_planyc_full_report.pdf
