During a CNN town hall, then-Senator and Presidential candidate Kamala Harris said, “There’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking”. Fracking, the process of water being injected into shale rock at high pressure to extract natural gas, allows producers to reach large quantities of natural gas previously unattainable and too costly to extract.
Fracking has not only revolutionized the oil and gas industry, it also supports tens of thousands of jobs in Pennsylvania. According to a 2023 report from the American Petroleum Institute, around 424,000 Pennsylvania jobs are in the fossil fuel industry, with 93,000 being “directly attributable to the oil and natural gas industry”.
In January of this year, the Biden administration paused approvals for pending and future applications to export liquefied natural gas (LNG) from new projects, which could have long-term impacts on thousands of Pennsylvanians’ jobs. The Biden-Harris administration has also refused to comply with laws requiring the holding of timely federal oil and gas lease sales and instructed its agencies to slow-walk permitting for oil and gas-related infrastructure.
During her tenure as Senator, Kamala Harris was a co-sponsor of the Green New Deal. While the bill failed to become law, it still is the blueprint for the Democrat party’s energy agenda. According to the President of the Institute for Energy Research, if Kamala Harris is elected President, “You can be sure she will double down on the disastrous Green New Deal. No more leases on federal lands, no more natural gas pipelines, and more green subsidies for big corporations. On top of that, I wouldn’t be surprised if she directed her Department of Justice to go after oil and natural gas companies for ‘climate crimes’ as well.”
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the Biden-Harris administration’s energy policies have driven up prices at the pump. The President of the Oil and Gas Association believes a Harris presidency would lead to the “Californication of the entire U.S. energy policy” and that her administration will be worse for energy-producing states than what we’ve already seen under President Biden.
