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Corbett: PA Is "Reaping a Bounty" From Drilling

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Governor  Tom Corbett today attacked anti-drilling activists at a Marcellus Shale industry conference in Philadelphia.  Corbett praised drillers for creating thousands of jobs and he called fracking opponents “unreasoning.”


"Our opponents agree that we can land a rover on Mars, but that can’t bring themselves to think that we can safely drill a mile into our own soil," said Corbett.  "After all the predictions of disaster and the fearful warnings of people with no understanding of the industry, Pennsylvania is reaping a bounty.
"

Corbett, the first speaker at the two day conference, said the state should work with the gas drilling companies.  

"If we used our imaginations and chose to partner with this industry, the wet gas harvested in Pennsylvania will be processed in Pennsylvania. The downstream jobs will be created here, and not in some other state or some other country.

While there’s no evidence of fracking chemicals making their way into drinking water, as many environmental activists fear, drilling has contaminated several people’s water supplies through something known as methane migration.
  That’s when stray gas makes its way from drilling operations to water wells.
  Corbett ended his speech with a call for long-term planning, referencing the boom and bust of Pennsylvania’s first oil boom, in the 1860s.