From DELAWARE COUNTY TIMES Editorial:
Gov. Tom Corbett’s “fee” proposal for drilling the Marcellus Shale is, at best, a lame attempt to address the bipartisan appeal for taxes on companies that stand to make billions on the natural gas in Pennsylvania’s Appalachian Basin…
Pennsylvania State University Geoscience Professor Terry Englander and State University of New York Geology Professor Gary Lash estimated in 2008 that there is more than 500 trillion cubic feet of natural gas within the Marcellus Shale Fairway that stretches through the center of the state from southwestern to northeastern Pennsylvania. Even if companies recover only 50 trillion cubic feet, that would be enough natural gas to supply the entire United States for about two years. The wellhead value would be about $1 trillion, according to the professors.
A tax on the companies extracting Pennsylvania’s natural gas would have gone a long way toward addressing the state’s $4.16 billion deficit projected for fiscal year 2011-2012. But with “no new taxes” as part of his campaign mantra last year, the Republican governor was loathe to admit that a severance tax on these gas companies drilling the Marcellus Shale made sense…
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