Pennsylvania Rep. Conor Lamb’s (pictured) Republican opponent railed against the Democrat Tuesday after he tossed his support behind former Vice President Joe Biden’s promise to end new fracking projects if he wins in 2020.
Lamb’s praise of the former vice president’s newfound fracking position comes as his state morphs into a leader in the booming natural gas industry.
The moderate Democrat is also running for re-election in a state that tilted heavily toward President Donald Trump in 2016.
“[T]he former vice president’s fracking proposal strikes a balance that aligns with the views of Democrats in his area of the state, where fracking is a major industry,” Lamb told The Wall Street Journal Monday. His Republican opponent isn’t buying the new pitch.
“The Democrats I’ve talked to– blue-collar union Democrats who work in the oil and gas industry– are scared to death by this rhetoric,” Sean Parnell, a retired Army Ranger who is running for Lamb’s seat, told the DCNF.
He added: “Over 100,000 oil and gas jobs in Western PA would vanish” under that plan.
Lamb’s remark came one day after Biden promised during Sunday’s CNN Democratic debate to stop new fracking projects after his presidential rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders, drilled the former vice president for not being tough enough on the oil industry.
“No new fracking,” he said in response to Sanders’ hectoring.
Biden also suggested during the debate that he would replace fossil fuels with “high-speed rail, taking millions of automobiles off the road. Making sure we move in a direction where no more drilling on federal lands.”
Biden’s surrogates say the vice president is referring to his plan to stop fracking on public lands, but conservative natural gas supporters say Biden’s position is effectively a ban.
“Saying no ‘new’ fracking is functionally the same as saying no fracking period,” Steve Everley a former energy advisor to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, told the DCNF. The fracking process takes nearly a week, meaning it’s not something that occurs for months or years. …
Biden and Lamb going all-in on a “no new fracking” agenda also comes as Sanders champions the issue.
Sanders, a self-avowed Democratic socialist, revealed his own Green New Deal in August 2019, promising everything from “virtually free” electricity and a “hunger-free” transition to green energy from fossil fuels.
Some researchers suggest the proposal if it became law would take a sledgehammer to American households in swing states.
Households would have ponied up an average of between $74,287 and $76,683 in Colorado, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, among other states, a February report from the Competitive Enterprise Institute noted.
Reports continue to show that such a policy would fracture the economy amid coronavirus fears and global oil wars.
Oil prices tumbled into the $30 range on March 9 as the Saudis pushed for a cut in output to prop up prices, while Russia went the other way, and decided to infuse the market with hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil.
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hey we don’t want the Albatross and Whales to disappear we want Eco-Freaks to Get Real
This puts Pennsylvania voters in the same situation as the UK or what existed in the Soviet Union. They have no one to vote for. Everyone on the ballot will work against their best interest.
Biden is a idiot his anti Fracking and rant against the Private Cars is based upon Politics and Junk Science the same Junk Science Global Warming/Climate Change is based on the same Junk Science they used to ban DDT Yes Biden is a Idiot and yes a Liberal Idiot and a Democrat Idiot
Fossil fuels provide 80% of U.S primary energy. Electricity is only 20% of that total. As it stands, we have no clean, scalable, sustainable alternative to REPLACE 95% of our transportation fuel & industrial heat along with the commercial & residential consumption. Basically, you bam fracing and all you are going to do is force the U.S to import oil. That means we will go BACKWARDS & become increasingly dependent (again)on foreign oil suppliers. Seems like we are bound & determined to saw the legs right out from under our energy system. To be kind, that would not seem like a very wise strategy…
They were warned that he was no “moderate” and would inevitably vote with his party.