Poll Shows Pennsylvanians Support Taxing Shale Gas

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.

November 16, 2011 | 4:58 PM

A new Muhlenberg College poll provides the latest snapshot of how Pennsylvanians view natural gas drilling. As the Post-Gazette explains, the survey mirrors other polls that show broad support for some sort of tax or fee on gas extraction:

About 41 percent of Pennsylvanians said drilling has yielded more benefits than problems so far, while 33 percent said it posed more problems and 26 percent weighed the pros and cons as equal. When asked to consider the long-term impact, 50 percent said shale gas will provide more benefits than problems, while 32 percent said the reverse.
While Harrisburg lawmakers finalize a shale bill, the researchers found little faith in Gov. Tom Corbett’s objectivity. About 60 percent either “strongly agree” or “somewhat agree” that the governor’s decisions on gas taxation and regulation are influenced too much by gas companies.
One thing’s clear: Pennsylvanians think the shale gas is indeed taxable. About 72 percent said firms extracting natural gas should pay a tax that’s allocated at a local level.