DEC chief: 'Absolutely no plans' to issue fracking permits during fiscal year

ALBANY — New York’s long-awaited decision on whether to allow hydraulic fracturing in the Marcellus Shale likely won’t come before April 2015, the state’s top environmental regulator said Monday.

Joseph Martens, the state environmental conservation commissioner, told reporters that it’s “extremely unlikely” any permits for high-volume fracking will be issued before the close of the state’s next fiscal year, which runs through March 31, 2015.

Martens made the remark after he testified as part of a legislative budget hearing Monday morning, where he revealed the Department of Environmental Conservation has “absolutely no plans” to issue fracking permits within the fiscal year.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s 2014-15 budget proposal includes no revenue from expected fracking operations, nor does it include money for any additional staff to oversee the natural-gas industry, Martens said.

“I would say it’s a good indication, because there’s no funds in the proposed executive budget for ‘14-15, that we will not be issuing permits in the fiscal year,” Martens told reporters. “It’s extremely unlikely. We have no plans to.”

New York first put high-volume fracking -- a technique used to help draw gas from underground formations like the Marcellus and Utica shale upstate -- on hold in July 2008, when the DEC launched a lengthy environmental review that is meant to guide the permitting process. A de facto moratorium on shale-gas drilling has remained in place since, awaiting the completion of the DEC’s review.

But the finalization of the DEC’s review, known as the Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement or SGEIS, now awaits the completion of a separate analysis by state Health Commissioner Nirav Shah. The health review was launched in September 2012, and Shah has given no indication of when his work will be completed.

“Until Dr. Shah finishes his review, we won’t be proceeding with (high-volume hydrofracking),” Martens said. “We just await his recommendations, and there’s no timetable for that recommendation.”

The state has set numerous timelines for completion of the SGEIS, dating back to before Cuomo took office in 2011. Pushing a decision back to 2015 would mean it would come after Election Day, when Cuomo will be seeking a second term. His potential Republican opponents, including Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino, have repeatedly criticized him for not issuing fracking permits.

In November, Cuomo said he expected a decision on fracking would be made before Election Day 2014. He later said that while he believes the work will be completed by then, his actual timeline is “whatever Commissioner Shah needs to do it right and feel comfortable.”

Critics of hydrofracking have trailed Cuomo at numerous state and campaign events over the past three years, raising concern about the technique’s impact on the environment and public health while calling on Cuomo to ban it.

Martens’ revelation Monday was praised by environmental groups, who have sought to expand the state’s health review to include a peer-review process.

Peter Iwanowicz, the executive director of Environmental Advocates of New York who was acting DEC commissioner in 2010, said Martens’ timeline was “good news.”

“Folks that are really concerned about fracking moving ahead in this state won’t be faced with waking up one morning and seeing drill rigs showing up in their communities between now and, say, the beginning of April 2015,” Iwanowicz said.

But the timeline was panned by a trade group for the oil-and-gas industry, whose executive director said Martens “must have slept through President Obama’s State of the Union address” on Tuesday.

During his address, Obama called natural gas the “bridge fuel that can power our economy with less of the carbon pollution that causes climate change.”

“With over 30 states using ‘fracking’ to provide more than 60 percent of the nation’s oil and natural gas, and over 1 million wells fracked over decades with no serious harm to health or environment, why does a state ‘environmental’ commissioner allow New York, a major consumer of natural gas, to sit on the sidelines indefinitely?,” Karen Moreau, executive director of the New York State Petroleum Council, said in a statement.