Pennsylvania’s Gold Rush

In economically depressed Northeast Pennsylvania shale drilling has reinvigorated local economies creating thousands of jobs (29,000) last year. Yesterday, Fox News featured the region and the Marcellus Shale “gold rush”.

At one point Pennfuture’s Jan Jarrett, a supporter of the natural gas tax, talks about the need for the state to “get as much as they can” from the natural resource. But taxing the natural gas will discourage drilling, besides the state already collected $190 million from leasing state land in 2008. When it comes to environmental concerns a Southern Methodist University professor writes:

“Hydraulic fracturing has been used in nearly one million wells across the U.S. Nonetheless, careful studies by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Ground Water Protection Council haven’t revealed a single case of drinking water contamination from shale gas drilling.”