President Trump and Joseph R. Biden have been talking about fracking on the campaign trail, but it’s about more than hydraulic fracturing. They’re talking about the future of U.S. energy.
The engineering feat that transformed a nation once dependent upon the Middle East into the world’s largest producer of oil and natural gas has become shorthand for the debate over whether America continues to ride the fossil fuel wave or shuts it down in the name of climate change.
Making the shale revolution possible was fracking, an extractive technology invented in the 1940s that injects a high-pressure mixture of water, sand, and chemicals into underground rock formations to release the oil and gas embedded within.
“We can’t do it without fracking,” said Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance oil and gas trade association. “Over 90% of the wells in the United States are fracked now. We have very few conventional resources, the Gulf of Mexico being one example. Otherwise, everything has to be fracked.”
With conventional oil fields, such as those in Saudi Arabia, “you poke that straw into the ground and it flows naturally,” she said. “But you poke that straw into the shale because the shale is very nonporous. It won’t flow without fracking.”
As Republicans cheer America’s long-sought energy independence and Democrats and environmental groups seek to move beyond the shale revolution to a green-energy future, hydraulic fracturing has risen to the campaign forefront.
Mr. Trump has embraced fracking. Mr. Biden says he would not ban fracking but would prohibit it on public lands and seek to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, which would mean replacing coal, oil, and natural gas with renewable energy sources, rendering fracking obsolete.
“Nobody’s going to build another coal-fired plant in America. No one’s going to build another oil-fired [plant] in America,” Mr. Biden said at Tuesday’s presidential debate. “They’re going to move to renewable energy.”
Meanwhile, the president has wielded the fracking issue as a cudgel, especially in swing states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania, where hydraulic fracturing in the oil-and-gas rich Marcellus Shale has driven an economic boom.
“Biden reiterated his pledge to require net-zero carbon emissions,” Mr. Trump said at a rally last week in Pittsburgh.
“That’s basically saying, do you know what that is? There’ll be no more oil, there’ll be no more gas, there’ll be no more nothing, there’ll be no more industry, there’ll be no more country. That’s what it’s saying really.
“And that would instantly shut down fracking and mining immediately in Pennsylvania, sending your jobs overseas, sending your money to somebody else, not you.”
Mr. Biden has countered by promising his clean-energy transformation would create millions of jobs with a massive infrastructure overhaul, including retrofitting 4 million buildings, replacing gas-fueled cars with electric vehicles, and ending the electrical grid’s dependence on fossil fuels.
Mr. Biden’s Clean Energy Revolution and Climate Justice plan comes with a price tag of $2 trillion, but he said it would “pay for itself as we move forward.”
“We can get to net zero in terms of energy production by 2035,” Mr. Biden said. “Not only not costing people jobs, [but] creating jobs.”
While Mr. Trump has painted his Democratic opponent’s plan as a radical job-killer, Mr. Biden is a centrist compared with many in his party, including his running mate Sen. Kamala D. Harris, California Democrat, who called during the primary for a fracking ban.
Mr. Biden didn’t help himself during the Democratic primary by muddying his position. In March, he declared “no new fracking,” which his campaign later said referred to new drilling on public lands, but he has since insisted that “I am not banning fracking.”
Democratic strategist Rick Ridder said he believed most voters don’t see Mr. Biden as an anti-fracking kind of guy.
“The Trump campaign is obviously trying to push that Joe Biden is anti-fracking because so many of the other Democratic contenders were opposed to fracking,” Mr. Ridder said. “And so they’re trying to lump them in. But I don’t think they’ve been very successful at that.”
He added that “Joe Biden is perceived by most voters in every focus group I’ve ever done as sort of a moderate Democrat, and so, therefore, suggesting he would ban fracking, they don’t believe it.”
Mr. Biden also faces intense pressure on the left from the environmental movement, starting with San Francisco billionaire Tom Steyer, a former Democratic presidential primary candidate and top party fundraiser.
“That’s what Biden’s struggle is: how to worry about jobs in the gas and oil industry in Pennsylvania, and at the same time keep his environmental constituency,” said Floyd Ciruli, director of the University of Denver Crossley Center for Public Opinion Research.
“Tom Steyer is one of his top fundraisers and campaigners, and has been for several months, and so he’s got Steyer right on his shoulder.”
In addition, polls show that voters are split on fracking, even in Pennsylvania. A CBS/YouGov poll released last month showed 52% of Pennsylvania voters oppose fracking and 48% support it. Then again, a Cook Political Report/Kaiser poll taken in November found 57% opposed a fracking ban.
Also fueling the issue’s profile is California, which leads the nation in transitioning to green energy — and was forced in August to implement more power shutdowns as electricity demand exceeded supply.
“You can’t wave a magic wand and say all energy needs to come from wind and solar because then you get California and rolling blackouts,” Ms. Sgamma said. “So I do think people have connected the dots and understand that energy is important, which is why the issue has risen to that level.”
Renewable energy accounts for 19% of electricity production, according to the federal Energy Information Administration.
Environmentalists have argued that fracking is unsafe, which the industry denies, and incompatible with the push to lower atmospheric greenhouse gases to avoid a “climate crisis.”
“The corporations that hype fracking are trying to lock us into a dirty future powered by fossil fuels. It’s a future that leads to more gas plants, more leaky pipelines, more compressor stations, more processing plants, and more dangerous storage facilities,” said Food & Water Watch. “We know the only way toward a clean, renewable energy future is to ban fracking and to stop all new fossil fuel development.”
Industry supporters point out that the shale revolution has been credited with reducing U.S. emissions by driving the replacement of coal with natural gas, which emits fewer greenhouse gases, at power plants.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration said Wednesday that U.S. emissions fell by 2.8% in 2019, part of a long-term trend that has seen the nation’s carbon emissions fall by 14.5% since 2007.
Even though the reductions lead the developed world, they are still a far cry from net-zero emissions, which is increasingly the standard championed by Democrats.
The Green New Deal resolution proposed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez calls for net-zero carbon emissions by 2030.
The New York Democrat heads the Biden campaign climate task force, leading to speculation that Mr. Biden, if elected, may renege on his promise not to ban fracking under pressure from the left.
“The primaries are over, and right now what is most important is to make sure that we ensure a Democratic victory in November and that we continue to push Vice President Biden on issues from marijuana to climate change to foreign policy,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said in a Sept. 17 interview with Just the News.
She has co-sponsored the Fracking Ban Act in Congress with Sen. Bernard Sanders, Vermont independent, but if net-zero becomes the standard, such measures may not be necessary.
“Fracking may become one of those things that we remember from the past, simply because we have alternative energy,” Mr. Ridder said. “It may fade away.”
Ms. Sgamma said she believes Americans are too smart to buy the great leap forward into a green-energy utopia.
Read rest at Washington Times
The Fragile Earth and the Delicate Balance of Nature are two of the biggist lies we have been told over the many years Climate Change/Global Warming is the bigist scam in the entire history of all Mankind
Any “environmentalist” who claims that a little more CO2 is not good for the environment understands neither the environment nor the climate. CO2 is the basic ingredient of all life on earth. All life dies without it. And CO2 has been naturally declining for the last 600 million years, from 7000ppm to within 30ppm of LETHALLY LOW LEVELS (180ppm). Just as temperatures have been naturally declining to the coldest earth has endured since snowball earth. A little more CO2 (120ppm) has been a Godsend. It has increased the earth’s biomass by as much as 30%. It is shrinking deserts by making plants stronger and more drought tolerant. And it has brought a string of world record crop yields – exactly the opposite of what the UN claims in their fake climate crisis fundraising. When it comes to crop production, I’ll trust the USDA over the UN-IPCC every day of the week. When it comes to crop production, the USDA actually know what they are talking about. And contrary to the UN’s fake extended droughts and famines, we are the best fed, longest living and most prosperous human beings that have ever existed. Earth’s crop production is ENTIRELY DEPENDENT ON EVAPORATION AND PRECIPITATION. So warmer temperatures mean what UN? CO2 concentration IS related to temperature. It doesn’t cause temperature changes; it follows them. And lags temps by about 800 years. CO2 outgasses from water as 70% of earth’s surface – water – warms. CO2 is not only the basic ingredient of life on earth. CO2 is also a product of coal, oil, and gas consumption. Making fossil fuels the ONLY green energy. And as for the climate, we are in an interglacial, the Holocene interglacial. The last twelve thousand years of an ongoing three million year long Pleistocene/Holocene ice age. Half of those twelve thousand years have been warmer than today with CO2 levels maxing out at 280ppm. Since the last half of the twentieth century CO2 levels have been steadily rising. While temperatures have been sometimes rising – and sometimes pausing. In truth, temperatures have been generally rising since the 1600s, one hundred years before the invention of the thermometer. And well before the existence of our modern day fossil fuel powered civilization. Just as temperatures have been rising and falling within about a 4 degrees C range for the entire Holocene interglacial. Temperature has done that a dozen times on an approximate cycle of 1000 years for the entire duration of our Holocene interglacial. So we don’t need to abandon 85% of the world’s energy. We need to drill baby drill. Because one billion people still don’t have any electricity. And 3 billion don’t have enough. Poverty has dramatically improved since musicians and youth brought us increased motivation with “We are the World”. But we have billions more to pull into at least a minimum quality material existence. If we don’t flush our remarkable progress towards a more prosperous and just world down the toilet of ignorance of energy, the environment, the climate, and simple biology.
Folks, we are MISSING the point (here). The fact that renewables, after 30 years of development and billions of dollars of taxpayer subsidies generate 19% of our electricity is great. Problem is, electricity accounts for only TWENTY percent of our total energy consumption. When you look at PRIMARY energy, that being energy uses of all types…utilities, transportation, industrial, commercial & residential, “renewables” land at about 5% of the total vs. EIGHTY percent for fossil fuels (coal, oil & natural gas). If you don’t believe me, check the numbers at the Energy Information Administration (EIA) website. So, what is the CLEAN, SCALABLE, energy DENSE & cost effective alternative these “activists” suggest to replace fossil fuels? Wind & solar is NOT the correct answer! This is a “Bigger Picture” issue. That, and there are NUMEROUS creditable, peer reviewed scientific studies by government agencies and universities that completely REFUTE the claim that fracing causes systematic contamination of groundwater. This whole energy discussion has nothing to do with what ultimately matters. Either charting a course that CRIPPLES our energy system or successfully transitioning our energy system. Fossil fuels will remain a critical part of our energy portfolio for decades to come until suitable replacements are technologically feasible & available. Let’s start an honest, thoughtful discussion about REAL alternatives and STOP vilifying energy providers. Otherwise, down the road a few years we are going to look back “fondly” at this summers California blackouts like those were the “good old days.” Trust me, you will ultimately care about energy when you no longer have a reliable & affordable supply…
Biden like all the rest of the Democ-Rats wants to ban Fracking and drilling cutting of the jobs since Biden is a Liberal Democrat and a Globalists as we know the Democ-Rats are in the pockets of the Eco-Nazis/Watermelons