Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday sat for her first major interview since becoming the Democratic presidential candidate nominee, defending her previous positions on fracking.
Harris in the interview with CNN’s Dana Bash did a 180-degree flip on the issue after stating more than five years ago that she supported a ban on fracking.
Asked by Bash on Thursday whether she still wanted to ban fracking as she did five years ago, Harris said, “No, and I made that clear on the debate stage in 2020, that I would not ban fracking.”
Bash countered by reading a quote from 2019 where Harris said, “There’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking.”
The response from Harris came in an interview from 2019 where she was one of several Democrats vying for the 2020 nomination at the time.
“In 2020, I made very clear where I stand,” said Harris in Georgia, repeating her position with Bash who interviewed the candidate alongside her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
“We are in 2024, and I’ve not changed that position,” she said.
In July, an official with the Harris campaign told the nonpartisan newspaper The Hill that Harris’s position not to support a ban on fracking is a reversal from her previous stance on producing energy from fossil fuels.
Harris sought to defend her position, telling Bash, “My values have not changed.”
She emphasized her fundamental belief that climate change is a real and present danger.
Flip-Flopping
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 sent to Cowboy State Daily more than a month ago.
The Western Energy Alliance, a Denver-based trade group representing oil and natural gas producers in the U.S. West, said that Harris’s claim in the CNN interview that she voted to expand federal oil and natural gas leases is misleading.
“Federal data shows leasing is at historic lows under her tenure as VP,” said Aaron Johnson, vice president of public and legislative affairs with the Western Energy Alliance.
Recent analysis by the alliance of data provided by the Bureau of Land Management shows the number of onshore acres offered for lease sales, the number of leases issued and the number of acres issued under those leases, each trend down significantly, said Johnson.
In addition, since the first of week of being in office in 2021, the Biden-Harris administration has failed to hold quarterly onshore oil and natural gas lease sales as required by the Mineral Leasing Act and the Inflation Reduction Act that Harris touted as casting the tie-breaking vote on, he said.
While oil and natural gas production is up in the United States, Johnson sees energy production eventually falling as the level of leasing falls off, especially in Wyoming.
Johnson cited the recently released BLM Rock Springs Resource Management Plan that takes more than 1 million acres off the table for potential energy development.
The plan to manage 3.6 million acres of federal land in southwest Wyoming, mostly in Sweetwater County, could hurt economically everyone from trona miners to energy exploration and production by oil and natural gas companies.
“She’s trying to deflect on the issue of fracking and suggesting that she supports leasing,” Johnson told Cowboy State Daily. “The record of this administration shows that leasing is down, by all accounts. We are at historic lows."
Johnson said that the level of leasing under the current administration is far below the levels seen during even the Obama administration that ended in early 2017.
“Over time, with leasing down, we’ll see production fall,” he said. “The actions of this administration will lead to significant reductions in oil and gas production over time.”
Pat Maio can be reached at pat@cowboystatedaily.com.
