The state is opening the door to a surge in natural gas drilling with the end of a moratorium across much of upstate New York on a controversial method called hydraulic fracturing to extract large volumes of natural gas from shale.

The state Department of Environmental Conservation said Thursday it will release new recommendations today on the horizontal drilling version of the technique, which uses millions of gallons of water, treated with sand and chemicals, under high pressure to unlock natural gas trapped in shale thousands of feet below ground.

The DEC proposal would permit drilling on private land "under rigorous and effective controls." The rules would ban such drilling on public lands and in the Syracuse and New York City watersheds.

Arguing that it would contaminate water supplies, environmentalists have lobbied against the practice, now allowed in Pennsylvania.

The DEC said the rules would give drillers access to about 85 percent of the state's Marcellus Shale, the gas-rich layer of rock long coveted by the natural gas industry. It would clear the way for drilling throughout a wide swath of the Southern Tier and Central New York, where geologists say they believe large amounts of natural gas are trapped within layers of dark shale.

"The report strikes the right balance between protecting our environment, watersheds and drinking water, and promoting economic development," said Joseph Martens, the state's commissioner of environmental conservation.

Drilling supporters said ending the moratorium could bring an economic boom to the state, with thousands of jobs, while opponents worry that the technique, commonly called "fracking," could cause significant environmental damage.

"It's been a long time, and I think New York has missed out on a huge amount of economic benefit," said John C. Holko, president of Lenape Resources, a natural gas driller in Alexander.

"It's been a long time coming," said S. Dennis Holbrook, executive vice president of Norse Energy Holdings in Hamburg. "As long as we safeguard the quality of the environment, the potential economic benefits are enormous."

Environmentalists were disappointed.

"It's a shame," said Robert M. Ciesielski, the chairman of the Sierra Club, Niagara Group. "There are serious health problems and public health problems with the waste from the drilling."

But the rush to drill would not start immediately. Today's release of the DEC findings, which run more than 1,000 pages, will precede a 60-day public comment period to begin in August next month. The DEC then will review those comments and make final revisions before issuing any drilling permits.

As a result, Holbrook said no horizontal drilling is likely to begin in the state until next year. 2012 He also predicted it would ramp up more slowly than in Pennsylvania, where more than 3,300 such wells have been sunk in recent years.

"I think it will be the most elaborate, well-thought-out set of regulations," Holbrook said. "It may be a bit overburdensome, but it will be the gold standard" for natural gas drilling rules.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, D-Manhattan, said ending the moratorium was premature.

"There are simply too many unknowns to risk inflicting long-term, potentially catastrophic damage to New York's environment and water supply," he said. "At a minimum, New York should wait until the [U.S. Environmental Protection Agency] completes its own study on hydraulic fracturing before even considering whether the state should permit this type of drilling activity."

The end of the moratorium is not expected lead to a drilling boom in Western New York, except for a swath along the southeastern corner of Allegany County, geologists and industry officials said.

Geologists say that, unlike the layer across much of Central New York, the Marcellus Shale throughout most of the western part of the state is too thin and shallow to hold vast quantities of natural gas.

But other geologic formations, including the Utica Shale that lies thousands of feet below the Marcellus, could hold promise for drilling in Western New York many years from now, industry officials said.

Drilling opponents have argued that the large amounts of water and potentially harmful chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing could pose a threat to drinking water supplies. Ciesielski cited issues with adequate treatment of wastewater and the proper disposal of the solid waste from the process.

Energy industry officials, however, contend that the moratorium cost the state thousands of badly needed jobs and preventing the development of a natural resource that could reduce energy costs and ease the dependence on energy imports.

The moratorium did not stop the drilling of vertical gas wells, the type that has been sunk throughout Western New York for the better part of two centuries. Most of those wells also are hydraulically fractured -- and continue to be -- but they use less than 80,000 gallons of water in the process.

The moratorium had covered the most controversial version of hydraulic fracturing, which involves horizontal wells like those that now are being drilled in Pennsylvania.

Those wells go straight down for about a mile, then gradually turn at almost a 90-degree angle and continue for a half mile to nearly a mile horizontally, through the Marcellus Shale.

Drillers then inject millions of gallons of water, chemically treated to kill bacteria and prevent scale from building up on the pipes, into the well at high pressure to produce tiny cracks in the rock to free the gas. Drillers also use small explosive charges.

The technique allows drillers to tap into much larger supplies of gas from a single drill site, which can have as many as six wells extending out in different directions. A single well can cost upwards of $4 million, but successful wells can produce gas at very high rates.

Industry officials have stressed that tens of thousands of vertical natural gas wells have been drilled safely throughout New York, and most of those drilled in the last three decades or so have been hydraulically fractured.

drobinson@buffnews.comnull