Dec 23, 2014 4 min read

Last week, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced no hydraulic fracturing would be happening in his state, following the recommendation of his acting health commissioner that there are too many unknowns associated with the process.

The decision wasn’t entirely unexpected, since our northerly neighbors have placed a moratorium on fracking since 2008. And most industry observers believe New York would have filched relatively little business from Pennsylvania had they opted to lift the ban, considering the extensive infrastructure that has already been put in place in the commonwealth, plus the fact that New York’s shale deposits are thought to contain primarily dry gas, which is used for home heating, versus the wet gas we have in some parts of Pennsylvania that can also be used in chemicals and plastics.

Still, for the time being, the massive stretch of New York from Long Island in the south to the town of Massena, which sits 400 miles away on the Canadian border, will be off limits to energy companies, at least for the time being. The wisdom of the decision is open to debate. And there’s absolutely no chance it will be repeated here. Gov.-elect Tom Wolf has underscored his support for natural gas drilling, with a spokesman saying last week that “Pennsylvania’s natural resources should help the commonwealth become an energy leader … as well as a magnet for investment and job creation.”

What the decision in New York does, perhaps, is strengthen the case for a severance tax in Pennsylvania.

Industry boosters have argued a severance tax could drive the industry away from the state. But where would they go? They can scratch New York off the list. West Virginia and Texas already have severance taxes, and Ohio’s Republican Gov. John Kasich has called for an increase in his state’s severance tax, though the proposal has been subject to intense wrangling in Ohio’s legislature. The likelihood of any energy companies pulling up stakes due to a severance tax is extremely remote.

Most polls suggest voters support a severance tax, and with a budget deficit approaching $2 billion, a severance tax would help boost the state’s bottom line. As Muhlenberg College political science professor Chris Borick told the PennLive.com website last week, a severance tax is “low-hanging fruit” and “it’s the most accessible and politically popular revenue source that Pennsylvania has that’s untapped.”

That being said, if Wolf and his counterparts in the Legislature are able to come to some sort of agreement next year on a severance tax, they should be certain that the revenue communities receive to ameliorate the impact of drilling continues to flow to them, and it doesn’t just end up in one pot in Harrisburg.

At about the same time Cuomo was announcing his state’s fracking ban, advocacy groups for the industry were voicing their opposition to a severance tax in Pennsylvania. Though they wouldn’t go as far as saying they would leave, they threatened that less capital would be invested here. But that argument seems feeble. As this newspaper reported, even if every gas rig in Pennsylvania were disassembled and mothballed, there would still be ample gas production in Pennsylvania, thanks to wells that have been drilled and capped while drillers await pipelines to carry the gas.

The natural gas industry made valuable contributions to job growth in this region and across the state, helped nudge the country toward energy independence, and contributed to falling prices at the pump. But the industry has also been getting a good deal on natural resources that belong to all of us. It’s time they pay their fair share.