Less than two hours after Kamala Harris was named Joe Biden’s running mate, President Donald Trump had cast the California Democrat as the oil industry and fracking foe.
“She is against fracking. She’s against petroleum products,” Trump said at a White House news conference Tuesday.
“I mean, how do you do that and go into Pennsylvania or Ohio or Oklahoma or the great state of Texas? She’s against fracking. Fracking’s a big deal.”
It’s a line Trump will surely use again and again against Harris, the former California attorney general who has vowed to fight the fossil fuel industry in court, embraced the Green New Deal and last September said there was “no question” she’d ban hydraulic fracturing.
But the criticism may have limited appeal beyond Trump’s political base and is likely to boost enthusiasm for the Democratic ticket among progressive voters.
Harris’s positions on the issue put her to the left of Biden, who has made clear he would not seek an outright ban on fracking, which could only be imposed through congressional action.
Nevertheless, Harris and Biden have both promised to curtail oil and gas development on federal lands and waters managed by the U.S. government.
And a senior campaign official reiterated last month that Biden would block new fracking on federal lands.
The “fracking” technique is used to coax oil and gas out of some 95% of U.S. wells today, and Trump has been touting his support for the industry as he campaigns for a second term in Pennsylvania and other swing states.
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Biden’s energy agenda was already “setting up to be the greenest in U.S. history,” but adding Harris to the ticket signals the Biden administration would “aggressively” pursue its policy goals, ClearView Energy Partners said in a research note to clients.
Some oil industry figures already fearful of Biden’s environmental agenda worry Harris would bolster his resolve to combat climate change and stifle fossil fuel development, including through regulations making them more expensive to produce.
But industry advocates plan to emphasize the importance of oil and gas as an engine driving the U.S. economy and critical to its post-pandemic recovery.
“The oil and gas industry represents about 8% of the American economy,” and is “a very important component of our recovery,” American Petroleum Institute President Mike Sommers said by phone.
“The world looks a lot different behind the desk in the Oval Office than it does on the campaign trail, and we’re an industry that represents 10 million American workers and will be a key part of that recovery.”
The oil and gas industry faces significant headwinds, not least from the historic drop in demand caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
Gas companies seeking to build new pipelines have been stymied in court recently, and some economists have argued a more effective recovery plan would involve green-friendly policies.
As California attorney general, Harris filed lawsuits against Phillips 66, ConocoPhillips and other oil companies for alleged environmental violations.
Her office secured criminal indictments against Plains All American Pipeline LP for a 2015 spill in Santa Barbara, California, which resulted in convictions in 2018 after Harris was elected to the Senate.
Harris also has a history of tangling with oil refiners that have operations in California — a pugilistic approach that could add heft to Biden’s threat to target fossil fuel executives and “put them in jail.”
For instance, Harris opposed Chevron Corp.’s planned expansion of a refinery in Richmond on grounds it risked accidents and would exacerbate climate change.
And Harris criticized a bid by Valero Energy Corp. to receive rail shipments of crude at its Benecia refinery, emphasizing the risk for spills and explosions along an expected Northern California route.
Nevertheless, some environmental activists have complained Harris didn’t do enough to pursue oil companies for misleading the public on the risks of climate change.
Though Harris’s office was reported to have investigated Exxon Mobil Corp. on climate accusations, it never filed a suit — an approach later pursued by other attorneys general in Massachusetts and New York.
Harris has since been supportive of the efforts and last year joined other senators in an amicus brief supporting a climate lawsuit against oil companies by San Francisco and Oakland.
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Less like a Albatross and more like Turkey Harris is a nutcase a loose screw and a total liberal democrat all mouth and no mind
Biden and Chameleon are much less than serious candidates.
And the blackouts in California, where officials are laying the blame on the loss of a 470MW generation station Saturday evening, and the loss of almost 1,000MW of wind generation, shows pretty clearly what the “green power, no matter what the cost” position is going to deliver. Relying on demonstrably unpredictable power is likely to drive any organization that requires continuous power to install their own (fossil-fueled) generators that will be inherently less efficient than industrial-scale generation systems.