Gov. Kathy Hochul on Thursday insisted “we’re not fracking” in New York to boost the energy supply — despite Vice President Kamala Harris saying she now favors such drilling for natural gas.
“We’re not fracking, we’re not burning coal. We’re not going backwards,” the Democratic governor said during a “future energy economy summit” in Syracuse.
It came after Harris, her party’s nominee for the White House, said during her recent CNN interview that she would “not ban fracking” if elected president – a major reversal from her position during her first run for the Oval Office in 2020.
“As vice president I did not ban fracking. As president I will not ban fracking,” Harris said in her first interview after replacing President Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket.
Fracking is a jobs producer and popular in Pennsylvania, a key battleground state for the White House.
But Hochul made it abundantly clear she doesn’t want to “frack, baby frack” along New York’s gas rich southern tier of the Marcellus Shale formation that borders Pennsylvania.
During the tail end of her speech, Hochul said, “I’m so excited about the ‘all above approach’ — except for the fracking and coal.”
Instead, she trumpeted carbon-free power generated by offshore wind, solar, geothermal or other types of energy.
Some of her energy officials also talked up nuclear power during the summit.
Fracking is the drilling procedure injecting liquid at high pressure into subterranean rock to force open existing fissures and extract oil or gas.
A report by the Manhattan Institute think tank a decade ago estimated that 15,000 to 18,000 jobs could be created in the Southern Tier and Western New York if fracking were permitted, generating up to $11.4 billion in economic output and $1.4 billion in state and local tax revenue.
After years of study and controversy, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo banned fracking in 2014 after a health department study cited public health risks because of the potential to contaminated groundwater.
There’s little support in the Democratic-run legislature to revisit the issue.
Fracking generated intense opposition from the environmental left and celebrities including Yoko and Sean Ono and actor Mark Ruffalo.
Vintners from New York’s growing wine industry in the nearby Finger Lakes region also opposed fracking.
