Platts Gas Daily
By Rodney White
The US Chamber of Commerce, through its recently created Institute for 21st Century Energy, will lobby governors and state legislators to support shale gas and oil drilling, institute President and CEO Karen Harbert said Thursday.
“This will be a broad-based effort through our existing chamber network, state chambers, local chambers and all the businesses that are members of the chamber,” she said at a press conference in Washington. “We want to find a way to have us all row in the same direction. We would have a much bigger voice, a much more national voice” on drilling-related issues.
She said the institute will focus on what more unconventional oil and gas development could mean to state, regional and local economies, especially with regard to job creation. She also said the institute will debate opponents with facts and “not give way to mythology and fear-mongering.”
Harbert said the group is active in New York State, where Governor Andrew Cuomo is pondering whether to approve regulations that would allow drillers to develop Marcellus Shale resources in five Southern Tier counties.
The draft Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement has been under review for more than three years.
“We are certainly running a great deal of advocacy through our broad network in New York to encourage the leaders to make the right decision,” she said. “We are active in a very big media campaign in Albany and Binghamton. We’re on the radio in those areas as well. We are trying to give voice to those people in the Southern Tier counties that would immediately benefit from the development of shale energy in that area.”