Nick Juliano, E&E reporter
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is launching a new campaign touting the economic benefits of shale gas development and warning against the federal government's efforts to regulate the practice.
The campaign, which was rolled out today at an event in Washington, D.C., targets Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and New York -- all of which contain recently discovered deposits of shale gas and oil that are accessible through hydraulic fracturing and are grappling with efforts to balance the industry's growth while ensuring air and water are protected. Pennsylvania and Ohio also are up for grabs in the presidential race, and energy issues are likely to be heavily discussed on the campaign trail.
Through the "Shale Works for US" campaign, the chamber plans to highlight a "success story in the making," said Karen Harbert, president and CEO of the chamber's Institute for 21st Century Energy, which is leading the effort.
"We have the unique ability, I think, to weave together lots of coalitions," Harbert said at the launch event for the campaign, which is pulling in participation from state and local chambers of commerce and other business organizations in the targeted states.
The campaign will feature grass-roots organizing through a new website and other means, advertising and other efforts to build support for expanded shale development. It launched last week in Ohio, followed by events in Pennsylvania and West Virginia (Energywire, July 19).
Development in Ohio's Utica Shale formation is still in a relatively early stage, compared with the massive growth in Marcellus Shale drilling in Pennsylvania in recent years, but officials and business leaders are excited for the prospect of thousands of new jobs to come to the state over the next several years in exploration and related industries.
"This is economic growth unlike anything we've seen in the steel industry since the 1980s," said Linda Woggon, executive director of the Ohio Shale Coalition and executive vice president of the Ohio Chamber of Commerce.
A key aspect of the new chamber campaign will be arguing for the "right policies" to foster shale development, including arguing against duplicative federal rules added to existing state-level regulations, Harbert said.
Although Harbert did not single out any particular federal rules, such as recent U.S. EPA air regulations on fracking, she said states with long-standing shale extraction industries have been effectively regulating the practice for decades and that states with new finds are updating their own regulations accordingly.
"And they should do that," she said. "What we do not need is more regulation for regulation's sake, and to layer federal regulation on top of very effective state regulation. So we need to approach this thoughtfully -- more regulation does not necessarily mean better regulation."