“Can we put that to rest? I don’t know where that came from. We’re not drilling in the state parks,” he said. “There was moratorium on state forests, we haven’t lifted that – we haven’t even talked about lifting that.”
“We haven’t even talked about drilling in the state parks. We haven’t talked about any kind of strip mining in the state parks. So all the stories that are out there, it’d be nice if people got their facts straight,” he said.
Former DCNR parks director John Norbeck said recently his resignation from his post was due to “philosophical differences” between himself and the Corbett administration, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Corbett noted that drilling is occurring in the Allegheny National Forest, which is not under state control. A U.S. Circuit Court in Philadelphia ruled in September that the government does not control the mineral rights and owners should be allowed access to the oil and gas below the surface.
