According to an article I read on our sister site, The Unconventional Gas Center (ugcenter.com), state and local officials in New York and Pennsylvania want to impose a drilling moratorium in parts of the Marcellus. Concerned with the effects of drilling on local communities, the New York Senate has passed a new bill that halts specific drilling projects in different areas of the state until May 2011.

According to the bill, it will suspend, “the issuance of new permits for the drilling of a well which utilizes the practice of hydraulic fracturing for the purpose of stimulating natural gas or oil in low permeability reservoirs such as the Marcellus and Utica formations.”

In an interview with the Associated Press, New York Governor David Paterson asserted that shale drilling would not be allowed to proceed within his state without “overwhelming evidence” that the practice will not harm local water supplies.

“[This controversy] is obviously a clash between a very lucrative profit-making opportunity and a very serious public safety hazard,” Paterson said.

To read the rest of the article, visit:

https://www.ugcenter.com/Shales/US/Marcellus/Features/item65537.php

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