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New York Blocking Natural Gas Pipelines Comes Back To Haunt Them

   DailyWire.com

Who could have seen this coming? New York Democrats’ repeated blocking of natural gas pipelines in the state have resulted in some unfortunate news for residents of Long Island: no fuel for new customers unless lawmakers reverse their years-long stance against the low-cost energy source.

The New York Post‘s Craig Stevens reported Sunday on the latest setback for New York residents resulting from the “political hurdles and bureaucracy” that have delayed pipeline construction in the state.

“National Grid, which provides natural gas for nearly 600,000 Long Island residents, announced it won’t be able to provide fuel for new customers if the proposed Williams Co. Transco pipeline expansion isn’t approved by May 15,” Stevens reports. And that’s not the first time residents have gotten such news. “Earlier this year, energy company Con Ed imposed a similar moratorium on new natural gas service in parts of Westchester County due to limited capacity on existing pipelines.”

Stevens notes that this “completely avoidable” cost-increasing, energy source-suppressing trend has been going on for years, including in the infamous case of the Constitution Pipeline, which was going to bring much-needed gas from Pennsylvania into the state but which has been held up by New York officials despite federal regulators approving the construction back in 2014.

And the costs of these anti-affordable energy policies have been extremely high for the state. Citing a study by the Global Energy Institute, Stevens says that since 2010, the state’s anti-fracking, anti-pipeline stance has cost the state 200,000 full-time jobs, $22 billion in GDP and $5 billion in tax revenue.

“New York state is the fifth-largest natural gas consumer for electric power generation. More than one-third of its electric-generating capacity relies on natural gas or fuel oil. More than 60 percent of electric-generating capacity installed in 2018 was fueled by natural gas,” Stevens writes. “The safest, most efficient and most environmentally conscious method of transporting natural gas is by pipeline. Despite this, environmental activists continue to move the goal posts.”

The deep blue state has repeatedly been in the news in recent months for its self-inflicted economic setbacks, most famously the botched Amazon HQ2 deal, against which democratic socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez helped lead the charge. Though the deal would have brought an estimated 25,000 jobs to her district and nearly $30 billion in tax revenues to her state, Ocasio-Cortez and her fellow radical Democrats in the state came out against it.

After successfully inspiring Amazon to give up on moving to the state, Ocasio-Cortez infamously suggested she didn’t actually understand how tax incentives work. “If we were willing to give away $3 billion for this deal, we could invest those $3 billion in our district ourselves, if we wanted to,” she said in February after the deal collapsed. “We could hire out more teachers. We can fix our subways. We can put a lot of people to work for that money, if we wanted to.”

Democrat New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has since said he’s “working intensely” to lure Amazon back.

Related: Ocasio-Cortez Explodes Over People Saying She ‘Didn’t Understand’ Amazon Deal

H/T Jazz Shaw

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