Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate, told a national publication that she will not seek to ban fracking if she’s elected as the top executive in government.
Harris’s position not to support a ban on fracking is a reversal from her previous stance on producing energy from fossil fuels, an official with the Harris campaign told the nonpartisan newspaper The Hill on Friday.
In the last presidential race in 2020, Harris told CNN in an interview that she opposes fracking.
“There’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking,” said Harris in the interview, who was one of several Democrats vying for the 2020 nomination at the time.
Since Harris became the party’s likely nominee after Biden dropped out of the race, Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, have highlighted her position from five years ago.
“She wants no fracking,” Trump told supporters last week during a rally in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Her new position on fracking is politics, not policy, say political watchdogs.
“As they say here in [Washington] D.C., campaigning is one thing and governing is another, and a primary campaign in 2020, when oil prices were bottoming out, is a very different sort of animal from a general election in 2024, when voters have recent memories of $5-plus per gallon of gasoline,” said Kevin Book, managing director of research with ClearView Energy Partners LLC, in an email to Cowboy State Daily.
“As Biden heiress, the vice president effectively owns the Biden-Harris Administration’s positions,” Book said.
“We continue to anticipate a stepped-up emphasis on climate policy, as it offers a possible route to reinvigorating support from under-30 voters whose turnout could decide closely contested swing states,” he said. “But Pennsylvania — a major fossil energy producer — is one of those swing states.”
Playing To Pennsylvania?
Pennsylvania is likely a critical swing state for a Harris victory, Book told Cowboy State Daily.
“So, even as the Trump campaign revisits Harris’ anti-fracking past, we think she has strong incentives to project a more balanced stance,” he said.
Oil and natural gas also is a huge economic driver in the state of Wyoming.
Members of the Petroleum Association of Wyoming produce 90% of Wyoming’s oil and natural gas, generating more than $5 billion in annual economic activity and employing more than 18,000 people.
The Hill quoted a spokesperson for Harris’s campaign pushing back on Trump’s remarks in North Carolina.
“Trump’s false claims about fracking bans are an obvious attempt to distract from his own plans to enrich oil and gas executives at the expense of the middle class,” the Harris spokesperson said.
“The Biden-Harris administration passed the largest ever climate change legislation and under their leadership, America now has the highest ever domestic energy production,” the spokesperson told The Hill. “This administration created 300,000 energy jobs, while Trump lost nearly a million and his Project 2025 would undo the enormous progress we’ve made the past four years.”
Project 2025, a plan from the conservative Washington, D.C.-based think tank Heritage Foundation, is not directly affiliated with the Trump campaign. Parts of it were written by former Trump administration officials, but Trump has sought to distance himself from it.
Fracking is a technique for extracting oil and gas has become a political issue over claims of contamination and other pollution. Candidates’ positions on the issue may impact their standing in Pennsylvania, a key swing state that is also a major gas producer.
Cowboy State Daily could not immediately reach a spokesperson with the Harris campaign to confirm the shift in Harris’ position on fracking.
Standing Up
Harris has a history of challenging and opposing oil companies.
As attorney general of California, she sued multiple major oil and gas companies over pollution.
This is one of her hallmarks.
Harris has brought lawsuits against fossil fuel companies, prosecuted a pipeline company over an oil leak and investigated Exxon Mobil Corp. for allegedly misleading the public about climate change.
A potential Harris presidency is viewed as being more aggressive than Biden in confronting oil companies on pollution and addressing environmental justice.
She’ll also likely stay the course on Biden’s environmental policies that have impacted Wyoming and have prompted Gov. Mark Gordon to dig in his heels and threaten litigation.
Gordon has hired law firms to fight the administration over Biden’s plans to end coal leasing on public lands with the Bureau of Land Management by 2041, and the Environmental Protection Agency’s rules and regulations that impede the state’s ability to mine coal and sell the valuable commodity to utilities to fuel power plants.
Pat Maio can be reached at pat@cowboystatedaily.com.
