Vice President Kamala Harris hasn't said much about her position on oil and gas since becoming the presumptive, and now official, Democratic nominee for president . That's likely by design, say industry watchers.
The economic plan Harris recently laid out has so far made no mention of how to handle energy prices, while her Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump, repeatedly brings up a promise to "drill, baby, drill" in order to lower the cost of gas and electricity.
Earlier this week, Trump criticized Harris at a Pennsylvania rally after her campaign recently assured she would not try to ban fracking, the drilling technology Harris once opposed while trying to win the Democratic presidential nomination in 2019.
"She’s been anti-fracking, anti-drilling, anti-oil and gas from practically the day she was born," Trump said during the rally.
"All of a sudden, a couple of months ago she, says, 'Oh I'd love to have fracking.' No, she won’t have fracking."
The Harris campaign told the AP that Trump's comments were an "attempt to distract from his own plans to enrich oil and gas executives at the expense of the middle class." The statement came after a Washington Post report that said Trump told oil executives that they should raise $1 billion for him and it would be a "deal" because of how much he'd reverse Biden's environmental rules.
A look at Harris's record shows she leaned more progressive prior to her selection as Joe Biden's running mate. As a senator in 2019, Harris co-sponsored a Green New Deal that aimed to transition the US to 100% clean energy within a decade. That chapter in her career included her 2019 run for the presidency, during which she said in a debate that year, "There's no question I'm in favor of banning fracking."
Later in that same campaign season, this time as a candidate for vice president in 2020, Harris was promising that the Biden administration would not ban fracking.
Recent polling conducted by Morning Consult shows the vast majority of voters in battleground states like Pennsylvania, Arizona, Michigan, and North Carolina believe producing more natural gas and oil could help lower energy and utility costs.
"I think [the Harris campaign is] going to avoid the issue as much as they can," said Tim Tarpley, president of Energy Workforce and Technology Council, an industry trade association. "It was not present at the [Democratic National Convention] in any measurable fashion. I think that was tactical."
"At the end of the day, they're not going to move forward with some of the more radical aggressive moves like a fracking ban," Tarpley added.
Instead, industry watchers say if Harris wins in November, she'll likely push for a faster implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act, the Biden administration's biggest piece of green energy legislation aimed at accelerating the adoption of electric vehicles and other renewable technologies.
Harris cast the tiebreaking vote to pass the IRA two years ago.
"I think you’re going to see a lot of tax credits and incentives to foster acceleration of green energy," Matt Willer , managing director of capital markets and partner at Phoenix Capital, told Yahoo Finance.
Willer also expects more punitive taxes on fossil fuel production. Earlier this year, the Biden administration increased the cost for oil companies drilling on federal land . The administration also paused the approval of new licenses to export US liquefied natural gas (LNG), a measure that was later successfully challenged in court by 16 states .
Despite Democrats' push toward less dependency on fossil fuels, the US is still the world's largest oil producer, with production near peak levels. The country is also the world's largest LNG exporter.
Energy giants posted record profits during the Biden administration as oil prices spiked amid the onset of the Russia-Ukraine war, while US industry players flush with cash increased spending on mergers and acquisitions to $234 billion last year.
Biden has long downplayed the good times for oil companies during his administration, choosing to focus instead on his green energy efforts.
Despite tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to combat high gas prices in 2021, prices haven't retreated all the way to pre-pandemic levels. The national average price of gasoline on Friday sat at $3.38, about $0.47 lower than a year ago, but still higher than when Trump was in office.
That's part of the reason why green energy supporters don't believe Harris will try to curtail oil production.
"You'll continue to see production happen and [a Harris administration] not trying to stop that necessarily, but 100% trying to make it better, cleaner, and make sure that as long as we're in this business, we're among the best," Samantha Gross, director of energy security and climate initiative at the Brookings Institution, told Yahoo Finance.
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