The White House Will Determine What Comes Next On DRBC Fracking Vote

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Pres­i­dent Obama, at the White House

Green­wire has a good look at the crit­i­cal role the Obama Admin­is­tra­tion will play in break­ing the Delaware River Basin Commission’s dead­lock over whether or not to pro­ceed with new hydraulic frac­tur­ing regulations.

As the arti­cle points out, frack­ing along the Delaware and the con­tro­ver­sial Key­stone XL pipeline put the White House in the same tricky spot: on one hand, the admin­is­tra­tion is des­per­ate to cre­ate jobs. On the other hand, there’s a very active, very vocal group of envi­ron­men­tal advo­cates who are dead-set against both efforts.

The Obama admin­is­tra­tion con­trols the tie-breaking vote on a plan to begin drilling for nat­ural gas in the North­east, shin­ing a spot­light on its efforts to find a mid­dle ground on the use of hydraulic frac­tur­ing to tap deep shale rock for­ma­tions for energy.

Some local envi­ron­men­tal groups are com­par­ing the pro­posal, and their efforts to block it, to the debate over the Key­stone XL pipeline, which would bring crude to the United States from Canada’s oil sands region. Green groups claimed a big vic­tory ear­lier this month when the admin­is­tra­tion delayed a deci­sion on that project.

The admin­is­tra­tion is hold­ing its cards close to the vest on the drilling pro­posal before the Delaware River Basin Com­mis­sion. The obscure but impor­tant agency has author­ity over devel­op­ment in a water­shed that includes parts of four states and sup­plies drink­ing water to 5 per­cent of the country’s pop­u­la­tion, includ­ing Philadel­phia and New York City.

Late last week, the com­mis­sion called off a vote that had been planned for today on whether to approve reg­u­la­tions and allow drilling to start.