Tom Shepstone
Shepstone Management Company, Inc.

To truly understand the insanity of New York’s fracking ban, all that’s needed is to look at a new report; “What If Hydraulic Fracturing Was Banned?”

December 17, 2014 is the date that will mark the beginning of the Empire State’s descent into energy madness that will leave New York an economic wasteland compared to other large states. That was the day Andrew Cuomo, Governor Corruptocrat, decided to throw fracking to the wind and ride the currents of politically correct renewable energy to that nirvana that would set him up to capture a future Presidential nomination. He sold out, not just Upstate New York that day, but all New Yorkers. How do we know? Because the Institute for 21st Century Energy just came out with a report answering the question “What If Hydraulic Fracturing Was Banned” for neighboring Pennsylvania and the US as a whole.

Cabot Oil & Gas – One of the rigs that has revitalized Pennsylvania’s Northern Tier

The Institute for 21st Century Energy is affiliated with the US Chamber of Commerce. Its report goes into great detail, using Energy Information Administration (EIA) data and the IMPLAN economic analysis program. It shows, in a very compelling way, what would happen to the Keystone State (and the rest of the nation) if fractivist malcontents were everywhere rewarded as they were in New York by a craven pol with big ambitions. The whole report is well worth reading but it’s the Pennsylvania data that illustrates what New York’s Governor Corruptocrat wrought for his state (emphasis added):

In 2015, Pennsylvania generated $689 billion in GDP, had nearly 6.1 million people in the workforce and had an unemployment rate of 5.1 percent, which is below the national average of 5.3 percent. Pennsylvania is among the leading natural gas producing states in the country.

Pennsylvania households have seen an increase in disposable income due to the lower energy bills that have been made possible by the energy renaissance. State GDP has increased by $5.8 billion and 69,400 people have found jobs as a result of increased consumer spending over the past five years.

Pennsylvania’s natural gas production was more than eight times larger in 2015 than in 2010 because of development of the Marcellus. Gross natural gas production exceeded 4.7 trillion cubic feet in 2015 and made the state the second largest natural gas producer in the nation, after Texas. Pennsylvania is also second only to Texas in estimates of proved natural gas reserves, which quadrupled from 2010 to 2014.

The Marcellus (especially in southwestern Pennsylvania) is also rich in natural gas liquids (NGLs), including ethane, propane and butane. Pennsylvania has seen a five-fold increase in natural gas processing from 2010 to 2014 with additional processing and fractionation plants as well as pipeline infrastructure being built to support continued NGLs development, marketing and end-use.

The commonwealth’s positive economic progress, driven in large part increased hydrocarbon production and the broad-based associated benefits, cannot continue under a scenario in which fracturing technology is banned.

Our analysis finds that such a scenario would have the effect of displacing hundreds of thousands of jobs – impacts that would occur almost immediately, and only compound from there. Table 11 summarizes these severe impacts, which culminate in 2022 with the loss of nearly half a million jobs that would otherwise exist absent a ban on fracturing.

Higher energy costs begotten by a reduction in available energy supply – itself, a natural consequence of a national hydraulic fracturing ban – not only cost the Pennsylvania economy jobs, but they also take a significant bite out of the state’s GDP figures. As Table 12 shows, the commonwealth would be projected to lose $45 billion in state economic output in 2022 if unconventionals development comes to an end as a result of a national fracking ban.

Similar to the situation we saw in Ohio – but more severe – is the blanket ban’s impact on household income, driven primarily by the additional energy costs with which consumers and businesses will be saddled. As shown in Table 13, we project that households in Pennsylvania will experience a collective loss in income of $27 billion by 2022, with more than $23 billion of that total attributable to the higher energy bills they will be forced to pay.

The impacts on Colorado, Ohio and Texas, as well as the rest of the US, are examined in the report. Fracking is part of the economic mainstream now—as conventional as it gets despite the “unconventional” misnomer—and if fractivists got their wish, the country would be facing an economic catastrophe.

Abandoned Southern Tier factory

That catastrophe is New York State’s future. It includes not only a dead and gone Southern Tier but rapidly escalating electric rates for every New Yorker, wherever they still reside. SolarCity is already shaping up as a fiasco, Corruptocrat is resorting to subsidizing nuclear energy to keep the power on and his plans for solar farms are running into stiff opposition from the very people who have promoted them because they require roughly 20 acres of more or less permanent earth disturbance per MW of electricity actually generated. It’s not a pretty picture.