Cuomo won't join Obama at fracking hotbed sites
By MICHAEL GORMLEY, AP
Gov. Andrew Cuomo will avoid a potentially dicey political conflict by not accompanying President Barack Obama to parts of upstate New York roiled over the state's ban on hydraulic fracturing for natural gas.
Obama supports the technology as an economic windfall that helps make the country more energy independent. He's expected to find supporters as well as protesters from environmental groups when he visits Syracuse and Binghamton late this week. Parts of central New York and the Southern Tier are on the gas-rich Marcellus Shale formation, where energy companies want to drill with the promise of a boom to the long economically distressed area.
Obama's two-day bus tour will begin Thursday and hit the University at Buffalo, followed by stops in Syracuse, Binghamton and northeastern Pennsylvania. Cuomo said Monday he will meet Obama when the president flies into Buffalo but won't appear in Syracuse or Binghamton.
The governor has postponed a decision on whether to allow fracking, a method of extracting oil and gas from deep underground by pumping huge amounts of water, sand and chemicals at high pressures to break up rock formations. Cuomo says he's waiting for a study by Health Commissioner Dr. Nirav Shah, which the Cuomo administration has, since February, promised was just weeks away.
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