Vice President Kamala Harris is under increasing pressure from within her party to lift the Biden administration's moratorium on liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports, a move that has left Democratic presidential candidates in a key battleground for natural gas giants. Amid growing concerns that it could lose Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania's 19 electors are considered critical to winning the White House. Its reputation as a slightly left-leaning battleground state, which former President Donald Trump maintained by a narrow 0.7% margin in 2016, is somewhat complicated by its status as a major fossil fuel producer.
“It's clear that the path to the presidency goes through Pennsylvania,” American Petroleum Institute Chief Operating Officer Amanda Ebersole told Fox News Digital.
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Kamala Harris and a lonely pumpjack near Bakersfield, California. (Getty Images)
The current chorus of Democrats criticizing the moratorium comes after the Biden administration first ordered a moratorium on new LNG exports in January, citing the need to better assess the environmental and economic impacts of such projects. It's like a change from.
Now, nine months later and less than a month until Election Day, Harris is under pressure from some Democrats and industry leaders to lift the moratorium completely.
Critics of the moratorium argue that removing or delaying U.S. LNG supplies from the market would deprive European buyers of a cleaner, lower-emission form of energy, and that some countries could instead use Russian LNG supplies. They argue that they will be forced to turn to gas and coal.
It could also affect U.S. relations, U.S. energy leadership, and investment in large domestic projects in the coming years.
Pennsylvania is the second largest natural gas producer in the United States after Texas. Its gas reserves are contained beneath shale rock and must be extracted through hydraulic fracturing. The technology is considered controversial at best by many on the left, and Harris has only recently endorsed it.
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The fossil fuel industry supports more than 423,000 jobs in Pennsylvania and contributes more than $75 billion to the state's economy. According to estimates From PwC. The future of the LNG industry is therefore very important to most voters, industry association leaders and former Energy Department officials told Fox News in a series of interviews.
In fact, Sens. Bob Casey and John Fetterman of the Pennsylvania Democratic Senate Caucus were among the first to criticize the LNG moratorium following Biden's announcement earlier this year. Members of the House of Representatives are similarly seeking re-election in battleground districts.
Meanwhile, Republican candidate Dave McCormick, who hopes to flip Casey's seat this fall, slammed the Democratic incumbent for not doing enough to protect the state's energy interests. A spokesperson for Mr. Casey's office pointed to Fox News the senator's previous letters and statements opposing the LNG moratorium.
a recent opinion polls A poll released this month by API found that 85% of Pennsylvania voters want to hear more about energy policy from both Harris and Trump.
Harris has so far declined to comment on whether she would lift the LNG moratorium, and neither her campaign nor the White House responded to Fox News' requests for comment.
Asia Vision's LNG carrier is docked at Cheniere Energy's terminal in Sabine Pass, Texas. (Lindsay Johnnys/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
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API's Ebersole said that if Harris intends to break with Biden or seek to lift the moratorium and increase production, she needs to make that clear quickly.
“In fact, if she intends to be different than the Biden administration,” Ebersole said. “Then how exactly?”
Rhetoric alone is not enough, she says. That's especially true given that private investors in the U.S. have also pulled out of some projects in recent months, citing regulatory uncertainty.
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“We need to get shovels in the ground,” Eversole said. “We need to build more infrastructure, we need to be able to move safely, we need to be able to move products, and we need to be able to make long-term investments.”
