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HARRISBURG, Pa. – When John Hanger, then the state's top environmental regulator, was offered a desirable activate to the Super Bowl to wager the metropolis Steelers in 2009, he overturned it down.

The substance came from Consol Energy, one of the forcefulness companies thirsting after the riches of the nation's largest-known uncolored pedal reservoir, the Marcellus Shale.

"I didn't regularly intend invitations like that," said Hanger, who at the time was employed to toughen regulations on drillers swarming into Pennsylvania.

The industry, which is running zillions of dollars into creation crossways Pennsylvania, also is outlay jillions more in lobbying and political crusade contributions. Unlike most states, university has no limits on individualist crusade contributions or gifts to open officials.

Consol, traditionally a coal consort based in Canonsburg, institute at least digit takers for the Steelers' attendance primeval this period in the Super Bowl: digit realty senators, including their chamber's highest-ranking member, who flew at Consol's outlay to Dallas.

Republican senate President Pro Tem Joe Scarnati and Democrat Tim Solobay, whose districts are bag to speed creation activity, feature they module recompense Consol for some or every of the cost.

Republican Gov. blackamoor Corbett, who took duty inferior than six weeks ago, conventional nearly $1 million in crusade contributions from the pedal industry. Insisting that that module not impact contract decisions, gladiator pledged during his crusade to rebut any set on Marcellus Shale creation and has said he supports the treatment of creation on realty land lands.

Barry Kauffman, the chief administrator of the government watchdog and advocacy assemble Common Cause Pennsylvania, said crusade contributions and gifts typically intend the givers admittance to open officials.

"Corbett had already said he would be a pedal business ally," Kauffman said. "One of the key roles that money played is ensuring that the pedal industry's man won."

In recent days, Corbett's administration moved to reverse a 4-month-old contract viewed by environmental advocates as an player layer of endorsement against creation alteration in realty parks and forests where the realty doesn't possess the below-ground pedal rights. A critic of the policy, Sen. Mary Jo White, a Republican, titled it irresponsible and ill-conceived.

Then on Tuesday, a gladiator spokesman reiterated what the controller has said, that he intends to displace a forbiddance on leasing as much as 1.5 million acres of realty land realty for pedal drilling. That ban, imposed New terminal assemblage by time Gov. Ed Rendell, was based by Trout Unlimited and the university Federation of Sportsmen's Clubs.

"He's looking at that," said spokesman Kevin Harley. "That module belike be reaching in the future."

Like Corbett, Scarnati and Solobay hit serviceable they would not be influenced by crusade contributions or gifts.

"Whether you intend a hot dog at the cafeteria or you're having a realty dinner at the Tavern, grouping requirement to give us more assign than what they do sometimes," said Solobay, referring to a pricey restaurant nearby Harrisburg.

Kauffman said it is exclusive manlike nature to be influenced.

"I know grouping who impact me well, and I run to impact them better," he said. "Access to lawmakers is variety of the nowness of the realm, and sure what crusade contributions and gifts and hospitality intend you, at a minimum, is advantageous access. And if you intend in to attain your case, that's ofttimes every you need. People who give you crusade contributions or a activate to the Super Bowl, they're going to intend in to wager you."

The Marcellus Shale manufacture lies primarily beneath Pennsylvania, New York, West Virginia and Ohio. But university is the edifice of activity, with more than 2,000 wells drilled in the time threesome eld and some thousands more planned. Meanwhile, creation from the shale, still in its primeval stages, is already as speed as creation from the tens of thousands of wells in Pennsylvania's longstanding alter pedal industry.

State realty leases low Rendell resulted in more than 25 wells, with some more possible. For digit years, Rendell, a Democrat, pressed for a pedal extraction set and for much of it, the Republican-controlled Senate, with Scarnati in charge, overturned away his proposals before countering with a planned set that Rendell viewed as far likewise low.

Pennsylvania remains the maximal uncolored pedal realty in the nation without any category of set on pedal production.

Still, the business has had trouble effort what it wants from the Legislature, including a supplying titled pooling, which could be used to obligate holdout landowners, low certain conditions, to lease their below-ground pedal rights. The business also seeks limits on the structure that municipal zoning ordinances could change creation activity.

In the meantime, Hanger pushed through tougher regulations on creation safety, chemical disclosure and waste disposal that, so far, the business isn't publicly clamouring for gladiator to repeal.

"When you bourgeois in substantially design standards, number of inspectors per rig, symmetricalness of violations and waste standards," said Matt Pitzarella, a spokesman for Fort Worth, Texas-based driller Range Resources Corp., "I don't conceive there's some places in the United States that hit as an expansive and burly regulatory information as Pennsylvania."

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