Oil, gas allies welcome Harris fracking stance — with an asterisk

Vice President Kamala Harris’ attempt to explain her reversed stance on fracking did little to allay fears from oil and gas advocates about what she would do on energy as president.

And some green groups expressed their disappointment in Harris, while acknowledging the political realities of what the alternative would be if Donald Trump wins the election.

In her interview Thursday with CNN, the vice president reiterated that she no longer supports the fracking ban that she had called for during her last campaign for president in 2019. She cited President Joe Biden’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, on which Harris cast the Senate’s tie-breaking vote, as a sign of what’s possible on climate change and clean energy policy.

“What I have seen is that we can grow and we can increase a thriving clean energy economy without banning fracking,” the Democratic presidential nominee told CNN’s Dana Bash.

Fossil fuel advocates welcomed Harris' comments, but with a big asterisk — including what she believes on a host of other energy issues.

“Obviously it’s great that she has reversed her position on hydraulic fracturing,” said Dustin Meyer, head of policy at the American Petroleum Institute. But he added, “There are so many other critical energy policies where the vice president’s perspective remains an open question … and that’s why we’re so eager to hear more detail and clarity around her overall vision for American energy.”

The blurry spots in Harris’ energy agenda include her positions on Biden administration pollution limits aimed at pushing American motorists to buy electric vehicles, how she would un-jam congressional gridlock on speeding up energy permits, and whether she would lift or make permanent Biden’s pause on new approvals for natural gas exports, Meyer said.

Environmentalists also voiced some skepticism of Harris’ position, even as they continue to support her candidacy.

“We’re disappointed that Harris has equivocated on the fracking issue, but overall, the gulf between her and Trump on matters of protecting our environment and climate couldn’t be wider,” said Jim Walsh, political director of Food & Water Action, which has endorsed Harris. “Beginning the day Harris takes office in January, we will be working hard to convince her that fossil fuel development is harming the country, not helping it.”

Harris and her campaign have been road-testing their message on issues such as fracking — a technology that has spawned a fossil fuel boom during the past 15 years in states such as Pennsylvania, North Dakota and Texas while turning the U.S. into the top producer of both oil and natural gas.

In the weeks before her CNN interview, Harris’ campaign responded to questions about fracking by pointing to the country’s record energy production under Biden.

In her interview Thursday, Harris did not cite that talking point. Instead, she said her values “have not changed” from 2019, when she supported a fracking ban and the progressive climate blueprint known as Green New Deal, among other policies. “I have always believed, and I have worked on it, that the climate crisis is real, that it is an urgent matter to which we should apply metrics that include holding ourselves to deadlines around time,” she said.

She went on to say that with the IRA, “we have set goals for the United States of America and by extension the globe around when we should meet certain standards for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.” But the IRA does not set emissions reduction targets, although forecasters estimate it puts the U.S. on a path to cut greenhouse gas emissions by up to 40 percent by 2030.

The IRA also had some pro-oil and pro-gas provisions, including requiring the Interior Department to carry out several offshore lease sales that the Biden administration had canceled and mandating that the department continue to issue leases, for both onshore and offshore oil development, before it could also approve more renewable energy. Harris boasted about that too, saying she “cast the tie-breaking vote that actually increased leases for fracking as vice president.”

Fracking is a huge issue in Pennsylvania, the nation's No. 2 state in natural gas production and a swing state Harris will likely need to win to secure the presidency. Trump has been hammering Harris on fracking and energy issues and was set to hold a rally in the state Friday.

'Clarify what her energy policy is'

While fracking has accounted for much of the increase in domestic oil and gas production in recent years, most fracking takes place on private — not federal — land. Moreover, a president could not institute an outright ban and would most likely need Congress to act first.

Many pro-fossil-fuel groups said they wanted more information from Harris on her energy stances.

Tim Tarpley, president of the Energy Workforce & Technology Council, said it’s “no surprise” Harris changed her position on fracking, since public opinion has become more supportive of domestic drilling.

“The clarity I would like to see and what the men and women we represent would like to see is her to go beyond saying ‘I’m not going to ban fracking.’ We’d really like to see her say that she is supportive of what they do and she’s supportive of energy production here in the United States,” Tarpley said. “She could go a little bit further and really clarify what her energy policy is. We haven’t heard that.”

Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance, took issue with how Harris boasted about the IRA’s oil and gas provisions.

“The Biden-Harris Administration has used the IRA to ratchet down leasing to ensure they offer only a bare minimum. Lease sales have been anemic throughout,” Sgamma said, pointing to the frustration from Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chair Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.) — a key author of the IRA — on how the administration has carried out the leasing mandates.

Some environmentalists said her newest stance is less bold than what the climate crisis requires.

“Vice President Harris’ comments were disappointing and a far cry from the real climate leadership we need," said Collin Rees, political director of Oil Change U.S. "The science is clear — we cannot achieve our climate goals and adequately address the climate crisis without ending fossil fuels."

Still, one of Congress’ foremost climate hawks, Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), said he’s “fine” with Harris’ position, calling the hullabaloo over it “a sideshow.”

“I don't like fracking or any other type of fossil fuel extraction, but I think the fixation on fracking is a distraction from the bigger picture,” he said. “The imperative for confronting the climate crisis is to replace the fossil fuel economy with a clean energy economy as fast as possible.”

He said that “stopping the expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure that undermines the transition” to renewable energy was an imperative.

And RL Miller, president of Climate Hawks Vote, said Harris got it right.

Fracking, Miller said on X , is sometimes being used as a shorthand — "sloppily, I might add" — for all natural gas production, so banning it would be seen as a political nonstarter in areas like Pennsylvania.

"Nationally, we've laid a really important foundation, the Inflation Reduction Act, to start making stuff in America again, and by stuff I mean important stuff that we're going to need in the clean energy transition,” Miller said. “Kamala gets that.”

Pointing to oil and gas output

Before Thursday, Harris’ campaign had sought to avoid talking specifics about her fracking flip-flops. Instead, her aides wanted the focus to be on the increasing oil and gas production the U.S. has seen since 2021, when fossil fuel output began roaring back from its pandemic-era doldrums.

Asked on CNN about what had changed, campaign spokesperson Michael Tyler pivoted.

“She's been very clear here. She's proud of the work that she's done as a part of this administration, making sure that American energy production is at an all-time high,” Tyler told CNN host John Berman. “We want to continue that progress into her first term in office here.”

Berman pushed, but Tyler didn’t relent.

“Again, the vice president is very proud of the Biden-Harris administration's record on energy production and the economy writ large,” he said. “She wants to continue to build upon the progress that we've made here. That goes for energy production and it goes for the economy across the board.”

And when Harris’ campaign first told reporters in July that she no longer supported a fracking ban, officials at first avoided directly saying her new position, instead accusing Trump of “false claims about fracking bans.”

The campaign and Harris’ surrogates have also highlighted the “far higher” oil and gas output figures under Biden and the hundreds of thousands of jobs created in all energy sectors.

“As you know, natural gas production is at record levels, as is oil production, in this country, just factually,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) told Fox News host Laura Ingraham on the sidelines of the Democratic National Convention.

'Missing the mark'

But the Trump campaign doesn’t want to let Harris get any credit for the record-breaking numbers. On the campaign trail, Trump has been promising a massive increase in oil and gas drilling and claimed that output would be three times its current level if he were president.

David Bernhardt, who was Interior secretary under Trump and now is a campaign surrogate, told reporters earlier Thursday that the oil and gas numbers are still below what they were previously forecast to be under Trump.

“While production has increased, the reality is that production is actually below what would have occurred under the policies of President Trump. So they can take credit for missing the mark,” Bernhardt said.

It’s smart for Harris to put the emphasis on oil and gas statistics, said Paul Bledsoe, a lecturer at American University’s Center for Environmental Policy and former Democratic Senate aide.

“Focusing on the bright spot, which is U.S. natural gas production, supports her focus on bringing down inflation and consumer costs. I think that’s a very big part of this,” he said. “Natural gas prices have stayed incredibly low during the Biden-Harris term, and that’s been a real bright spot, not just for consumers but for manufacturing.”

Reporter Emma Dumain contributed.

A version of this story first appeared in E&E News' Greenwire.