Kamala Harris’ campaign flip-flops on fracking — again

The Kamala Harris campaign has flip-flopped once again on fracking, with a key campaign official admitting the vice president is not advocating its expansion.

Harris’ struggles balancing her climate activism with a shift to the center on energy threaten her chances in Pennsylvania, where former President Donald Trump is pulling ahead in some polling.

Fracking is a hot-button issue in the must-win Keystone State, where fracking supports around 123,000 jobs and was led to more than $41 billion in 2022 economic activity, according to the energy economists at FTI Consulting.

In a recent interview, Politico asked Harris’ climate engagement director Camila Thorndike how the campaign balances Harris’ recent statements in favor of fracking with the campaign’s rhetoric against climate change.

“Just to be clear, Vice President Harris hasn’t said anything that the administration hasn’t already said. She is not promoting expansion,” said Thorndike. “And so voters who care about climate change understand that she is someone that not only movements can work with, but she has championed these causes, and that we know who she is.”

Thorndike’s remarks on fracking complicate Harris’ latest statements, as the Vice President said in the debate that she “was the tie-breaking vote on the inflation reduction act, which opened new leases for fracking.”  These remarks were a reversal of her previous calls to ban fracking.

Fracking, short for hydraulic fracturing, involves injecting liquid into the earth to create cracks that open up previously inaccessible oil reserves.

Sarah Phillips, a petroleum engineer and prominent fracking advocate in the Pittsburgh area, told The Post that fracking is the only way to reach the oil reserves.

“Our shale here is less permeable than cement. It’s impossible to get to if we don’t frack.So it would decimate our entire industry if we didn’t frack,” said Phillips.

Greg Kozera, a native of the Pittsburgh area who worked in the natural gas industry for over 40 years and now works as an economic development consultant, told The Post that the Biden-Harris record on natural gas is complicated.

“She may be partially correct because it did help get that Mountain Valley pipeline done,” Kozera said of Harris’ touting the Inflation Reduction Act. “And the people of Virginia desperately needed that thing.”

But Kozera told The Post that he’s more confident in Donald Trump to create a friendly regulatory environment for fracking in the region of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia. 

“Of the two, I have to lean towards Trump when it comes to, because of his stand on energy. And I know that what he’s saying is the truth because he’s already done it. He’s been there,” said Kozera. 

But Kozera is less sure about Kamala Harris’ new-found friendliness to fracking after she spent part of her career advocating a ban of the practice.

“Harris, it sounds like she’s leaning that direction now. Maybe she’s figured it out, but I don’t know.

She’s flip-flopped on enough stuff that I thought, I’m not sure I can believe her yet. And that really worries me. if she follows what Biden’s been doing, he hasn’t done a whole hell of a lot to help the energy industry,” said Kozera.

In Pennsylvania, which is essential to almost any Presidential path to victory, the way Pennsylvania natural gas workers interpret the Harris campaign’s mixed messaging on fracking may determine who wins the presidency.