Op-ed contributor Larry Beahan isn’t the first anti-energy activist to employ dark imagery and breathless hyperbole to scare the public into thinking the development of clean-burning natural gas is dangerous; but rarely has a submission been as grossly inaccurate as the one attributed to him on this page last month.

It’s important to understand first that natural gas exploration is not a phenomenon new to our state. The first commercial gas well in the world was developed just 50 miles south of Buffalo nearly 190 years ago, and New York today is home to more than 14,000 producing wells, each of them tightly regulated by the state.

What’s different with the Marcellus Shale? For starters, it’s massive, by some estimates, holding as much as 516 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. And as our friends from Pennsylvania have shown us, it’s an economic game-changer as well.

Barely two years into developing its portion of the Marcellus, Pennsylvania saw those efforts generate 29,000 jobs and $240 million in state and local tax revenue in 2008 alone.

How did our neighbors fare in 2009? According to one study, gas exploration helped Pennsylvania create an additional 48,000 jobs and $3.8 billion in local economic development — still with a month of counting to go. Keep in mind that more than 900,000 people in New York are out of work, with jobs here currently being lost statewide at a clip of 500 a day.

But what of Beahan’s contention that the process for producing this gas is unsafe — a “satanic” ritual involving an “unholy brew” of “unknown chemicals,” as he puts it?

Well, 99.5 percent of that “unholy brew” is water and sand, and the trace additives that remain are posted online by the Department of Environmental Conservation for all to see. One of the most significant of those additives (by percentage) is “guar gum.” You can find that in peanut butter.

Other errors put forth by Beahan seek to intentionally mislead: Diesel fuel, contrary to his assertion, is not used in the exploration process (except in the trucks); the fish kill he references in West Virginia was caused by coal mine discharges, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, not drilling water; and the process of hydraulic fracturing has not forced a single person in Bradford, Pa., to leave his home.

Ultimately, the decision to leverage our state’s homegrown energy resources into jobs, revenue and opportunity during this time of economic uncertainty will be made by the citizens, not Beahan. Readers who’d like to support new exploration can send e-mails to

dmnsgeis@gw.dec.state.ny.us

. But time is running out. Brad Gill is executive director of the Independent Oil&Gas Association of New York and a member of the coalition EnergyInDepth. org.