Is Pittsburgh’s Fracking Ban Hurting Business?

May 25, 2012 | 11:05 AM

By Scott Detrow

Wikimedia Commons

Hydraulic fracturing is banned within Pittsburgh city limits

The Post-Gazette reports a Pittsburgh developer wants to build a $238 million skyscraper, but is having a hard time finding an anchor tenant.

A big energy company would be a logical choice, given Pennsylvania’s natural gas boom. But developer Steve Guy says the industry is turned off by the city’s ban on hydraulic fracturing:

Mr. Guy said Oxford also has spoken to “numerous” energy companies about potentially locating in the tower, although he would not name which ones. Both Chevron and Shell Oil Co. are looking for more space in the region and are said to be considering Downtown among their options.

However, Mr. Guy said the city’s ban on natural gas drilling, enacted by city council in 2010, has become an “issue” in those talks.

“It comes up at the commencement of every discussion with energy companies,” Mr. Guy said. “The energy companies have just simply said we’re not doing business in the city.

“We have to work through it, actually, because there’s nothing we can do about it.”

As our favorite Pennsylvania political blog, Early Returns, points out, Mayor Luke Ravenstahl had previously voiced concern the ban would curb drillers’ enthusiasm for opening office space in Pittsburgh.

Comments

Trenalg

Guess what: there’s something more important and valuable than “business.” It’s human life, quality of life, and our priceless environment, which is a gift. So what if nobody wants to anchor the sky scraper? Why do they need the sky scraper? They don’t!
CallMeNick

The energy companies’ reaction should have been anticipated. In this case it is an independent office company that is stuck in the middle.

What would really be interesting is if the energy companies took the further step and refused to sell oil or natural gas to any city property.

The hypocrisy of using the energy supplied from other countries would become alot more evident – and the impossibility of the implausible belief in solar/wind would maybe then become understood by the sophmoric green nazis with their elitist superiority complex….
Sean

Really Nick? Nazis? You almost made a point and then you went for comparing “green” people to Nazis. Your analogy seems a little sophomoric. No worries, by junior year you will probably start studying analogies to prep for the SAT’.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000151287433 Rubicondo Fugacis

Short answer is that if it IS hurting business, it’s hurting the kind of business you do not want anyway.
Dale096

“The ban would curb enthusiasm for opening office space “….. so what?? We need water to live; not fracking fluid. We need forward thinking businesses that don’t perpetuate the archaic “oil economy” . The talk of water wars by 2030 should be enough to knock us off our complacent buttts.
Mlbrue

PA, hold your ground. I have no doubts the various energy companies will continue to raise this objection in order to create an aura of business-unfriendly attitude in Pittsburg. Keep your eyes on the prize: a human friendly, toxin free living environment. Hang in there.
http://profiles.google.com/jfsabl J F Sabl

Well, next, think of all the high tech companies who have moved or are considering moving a part of their operations here because of Pittsburgh’s commitment to becoming cleaner, greener, more open minded, improving the air and water quality etc etc etc. They can move out as fast as they moved in, if we decide to foul up the rivers. Frankly, that risk worries me a lot more than a few more years of the same old (not new) problem that has dogged downtown properties for decades. For that matter, I’d say the problem with downtown isn’t a lack of tenants, it’s an excess of greed among people determined to hoard land and buildings by setting inflated prices for tenancy (and their enablers in government, who are glad to overvalue those buildings). Instead of sitting and hoping that someday the buildings will all turn spontaneously to gold, maybe they should fix them to a reasonably usable standard, and rent them for whatever the market currently will bear. We’d have a revitalized downtown, without having to sell a “once in forever” resource for a pittance, nor foul our own city, deplete our rivers, and foul our groundwater.

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