Businesses ranging from wildlife consultants to titans of the oil and gas industry will gather in Binghamton for New York's first shale gas job fair, buoyed by hopes that state regulators will lift a four-year-old ban and start permitting hydraulic fracturing this year. "I'm optimistic in saying the industry will be working in New York state fairly soon under some very well-thought-out regulations and oversight," said Broome County Legislator Steve Herz, an organizer of the event at Broome Community College on Wednesday. But even while shale gas drilling has been on hold in New York, companies and workers in the state's Southern Tier have benefited from the gas boom 20 miles south of Binghamton in Pennsylvania. "Neil Guiles of Vestal Asphalt is a perfect example of a New York company benefiting from what's happening in Pennsylvania," Herz said. "His business has tripled and he's made major capital investments." While thousands of wells have been drilled in Pennsylvania since the Marcellus Shale gas boom began about five years ago, New York hasn't allowed development to proceed in its part of the gas-rich shale formation that also underlies parts of Ohio and West Virginia.

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