Corbett Administration Still "Considering" Additional Forest Leasing

Scott Detrow

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Scott Detrow is a congressional correspondent for NPR. He also co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast.

Detrow joined NPR in 2015 to cover the presidential election. He focused on the Republican side of the 2016 race, spending time on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, and also reported on the election's technology and data angles.

Detrow worked as a statehouse reporter for member stations WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KQED in San Francisco, California. He has also covered energy policy for NPR's StateImpact project, where his reports on Pennsylvania's hydraulic fracturing boom won a DuPont-Columbia and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2013.

September 23, 2011 | 3:07 PM

Scott Detrow / StateImpact Pennsylvania

A drilling rig in the Tioga State Forest

Earlier this month, we took a look at drilling in state forests, and whether or not the Corbett Administration would expand drilling’s footprint beyond the 700,000 acres of state-owned land already leased out for natural gas exploration.
In today’s Tribune-Review, a spokesman for the Governor Corbett says the Republican is still weighing the idea.

Gov. Tom Corbett’s administration in Harrisburg is considering leasing more state land, though there are no firm plans at the moment, said Corbett spokesman Eric Shirk.

“The January 2010 lease sale under former Sec. (John) Quigley included 18,000 acres of ecologically sensitive wild and natural areas which can only be accessed underground and which brought in $128 million for taxpayers,” wrote Patrick Henderson, Gov. Corbett’s energy executive, in e-mailed comments. “Done correctly, it is possible to develop our commonwealth’s natural resources while ensuring the protection of our public lands.”

This summer, Corbett’s Community and Economic Development Secretary, Alan Walker, suggested additional leasing would “solve just about every economic problem [Pennylvania has.]”