I favor a safe extraction of natural gas through fracking and a fair fee to compensate neighbors and state and local government that bear an unfair burden of costs resulting from this profit-making activity.
Yet, you want to use the money for education in Philadelphia?
Gas companies should and do pay normal business taxes, which can be used for anything government funds wish to be used for, including education.
On top of that, they should pay a fair value for any and all "extra" costs they bring. For instance, extra road maintenance, clean up of any environmental accidents, etc. This is supposed to be covered by the "impact fee", although if the current fee is insufficient, well then let's fix that.
But I staunchly oppose an extra extraction tax, which may be justified on those terms, but will actually be used for something entirely unrelated. Jack compared the situation to the coal industry of years past. It's not as serious, but I'll play along with that. What if the coal companies actually were required to pay a fair value for all of their damages, as they should have been? And what if they did pay it? What would you think of the politicians who decided to take that money, and instead of cleaning up the ruined streams, decided to use it instead to pay some public employees in a region which saw zero coal mining?
Further, if such an "extra" tax is based on amount of extraction, rather than the damages caused, then it leaves ZERO incentive for the companies to cause less damage to begin with. The goal from a public policy perspective is to minimize the impact per volume of gas extracted, right? Hence, any extra taxes should be based on level of impact, not volume of gas extracted. You have to punish the bad behavior, and allow reward for good behavior.
So Jack, I have to ask whether the motivation for the tax is to minimize damage and compensate those who are damaged, or is it to simply generate revenue on the backs of an unpopular industry?
Anyway, MKern, I do live in a gas free area now. I s'pose I use some as some of my electricity is generated with gas. But I have no gas line to my house. That said, the house I grew up in has 5 wells in sight of the back door, none of them on our property so we receive no royalties. My parents are heavy gas users. They are shallow gas wells, but all 5 were hydrofracked, and all 5 while I lived there. I have a cabin in NW PA where there are thousands of shallow gas wells, most of which were hydrofracked, and a new Marcellus well a mile or so away.
Full disclosure, I also work for a company which sells material, some of which is used to make drilling equipment, and much of my job is oil & gas projects. I somehow became the oil & gas project guy, unofficially, but I tend to get those projects. Though our customers are more on the oil side of things than the gas side.