Marc Molinaro dropped the f-word Wednesday: “fracking.” The GOP gubernatorial hopeful said he’d back a “closely monitored” test of the practice.

Good for him. It’s past time someone revived the idea as a possible way to help upstaters left struggling by Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

In 2014, Cuomo banned fracking — the use of horizontal hydraulic fracturing to extract gas and oil from shale rock — in a sop to enviro-radicals. Yet it’s permitted nearly everywhere else in America and, indeed, is booming.

Over the past decade, the nation has seen a 60 percent spike in oil and natural-gas production.

And that has turned the world energy market on its head: Last year, the United States became a net exporter of gas for the first time in 60 years.

By 2022, the Energy Department predicts, America will be a net exporter of energy for the first time since 1953.

Fracking’s economic benefits are huge. Regions where it’s allowed have seen dramatic economic turnarounds.

And by reducing reliance on Middle East and Russian oil and gas, fracking has tilted the geopolitical balance.

New York, which sits on vast gas reserves in the Marcellus Shale, has missed out on these benefits, thanks to Cuomo’s ban — even as the economy upstate, where the shale is located, has stagnated.

And there’s no good health or environmental reason to ban it. Even the Obama Environmental Protection Agency found that contamination from fracking is rare.

Molinaro is pushing for a test program in the Southern Tier. It’s hard to see a downside — yet the upside can be considerable.

Fact is, Cuomo has offered no viable substitute for fracking’s economic promise. He pushed casinos and sunk billions into “economic development” programs that are little more than state handouts to politically favored businesses and campaign donors.

But that has led to little besides corruption; in 2017, Federal Reserve analysts found upstate job growth had come to a virtual halt.

Molinaro isn’t suggesting a blanket green light for massive fracking across the state — and with no advance study of the possible consequences. He just wants the practice to be considered as a possible option for New York, as it is elsewhere. Frankly, the state has nothing to lose.