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U.S. President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden participate in the final presidential debate at Belmont University on October 22, 2020 in Nashville, Tennessee. This was the last debate between the two candidates before the election on November 3.
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Biden's oil comments fuel long-burning debate over Pa. energy jobs

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Biden's oil comments fuel long-burning debate over Pa. energy jobs

President Donald Trump characterized former Vice President Joe Biden’s pledge during Thursday night’s debate to move beyond the oil industry as a “big statement” for voters in Pennsylvania to hear.

Was it? Depends on whom you ask. 

With 11 days before Election Day, the Trump campaign on Friday cranked up the rhetoric on fracking, the drilling technique that fractures underground shale rock and releases oil and gas.

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Mr. Biden said, in the presidential debate’s closing minutes, that he “would transition away from the oil industry, yes.”

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“The oil industry pollutes, significantly,” Mr. Biden said. “It has to be replaced by renewable energy over time.”

Mr. Trump’s campaign — which has sought for months to convince Pennsylvania voters that Mr. Biden would ultimately cater to the progressive wing of the Democratic Party and support a ban on fracking — seized on the comments.

The campaign released a new television commercial in the key battleground state Mr. Trump desperately needs to win to secure re-election. 

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The 30-second ad features a fracking technician named Jen driving her truck to a drilling site with the text: “Western Pennsylvania will lose hundreds of thousands of jobs.” The ad uses a slice of Mr. Biden’s comments from March — “no new fracking” — in which he says he was referring to new fracking permits on federal lands.

Other ads unveiled Friday call Mr. Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., “fracking liars” and claim Mr. Biden’s plans could cost up to 600,000 jobs in Pennsylvania alone.

“As [Thursday] night's debate proved, Joe Biden is an empty vessel for the radical left and cannot be trusted to lead our country's economic recovery,” the Trump campaign said in a statement announcing $55 million of combined ad spending between the Republican National Committee and the Trump campaign in the closing weeks of the election.

Mr. Trump also planned to highlight Mr. Biden’s comments on oil when facing Florida seniors on Friday.

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“I showed that Joe Biden is totally controlled by the radical socialist left,” Mr. Trump said in his prepared remarks, contending that Mr. Biden “admitted that he wants to abolish the oil industry.”

Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris found themselves once again on the defensive in the hours after the debate. Ms. Harris, who said during her Democratic primary campaign that she wanted to ban fracking, has since moderated her view.

“Let’s be really clear about this: Joe Biden is not going to ban fracking,” Ms. Harris told reporters in Georgia on Friday. “He is going to deal with the oil subsidies. You know, the president likes to take everything out of context. But let’s be clear, what Joe was talking about was banning subsidies, but he will not ban fracking in America.” 

Mr. Biden’s comments were not out of line with his previous statements and his climate policy platform released in July.

The platform — intended to be a “unity” document crafted with supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., his top progressive challenger in the Democratic primary — calls for a transition to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

While the platform bans oil subsidies, it pledges to promote the natural gas industry’s staying power by investing in methane leak reduction along pipelines, replacing aging distribution systems and developing carbon emissions technologies at power plants that burn the fuel.

Rep. Conor Lamb, D-Mt. Lebanon, a Biden supporter and one of nine members who helped write the climate change platform, has called natural gas an “ally” in the transition to clean energy in the coming years and wants more federal investment in technology.

“We can still have natural gas power plants here in Western Pennsylvania,” Mr. Lamb said during a telephone town hall this month. “And the natural gas market would have more demand, creating more jobs.”

Although oil was first struck in Western Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania fracking today is focused on unlocking reserves of natural gas in the Marcellus Shale, underlying much of Pennsylvania and parts of West Virginia, Ohio and New York.

Energy companies sometimes chafe at the co-mingling of the two fuels.

Pittsburgh-based EQT, the country’s largest producer of natural gas, has previously requested that it not be identified as an oil and gas firm but rather specifically as a natural gas driller.

EQT, in particular, has become more politically active since Toby Rice orchestrated a shareholder revolt last year and became the firm’s CEO. His pitch to the broader public is that natural gas is a clean fuel — cleaner than coal, when burned at power plants.

And if the emphasis is on environmental attributes, oil has little standing to boast. Emissions from oil and diesel-based vehicles now comprise the largest chunk of carbon dioxide emissions in the country.

The electric power sector, which traditionally emitted more than the transportation sector, has been trending down in emissions, thanks to the retirement of coal-fired plants replaced by natural gas generation.

Striking a balance

Industry groups tried to strike a balance between warning about the dangers of a Biden administration for oil and gas and reminding voters that a president has no authority to ban fracking.

Those decisions, as well as most safety and environmental regulations governing the production of those fuels, fall to states. Pennsylvania has never entertained banning fracking over the course of multiple governors, including two Democrats and one Republican.

“We aren’t going anywhere,” said Anne Bradbury, CEO of the American Exploration and Production Council, a national trade association representing oil and gas independents.

“The American oil and gas industry employs millions of Americans and supports our states and local communities through billions in revenue that goes directly to public education, health care, and first responders,” she said in a statement.

Mike Sommers, president and CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, issued a nearly verbatim warning in a statement.

In Pennsylvania, about 134,000 workers were employed by companies in oil and gas and supporting industries in March, according to the latest data available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s down from about 181,000 during the same time in 2016.

The political argument over fracking has become a complicated entanglement of half-truths, out-of-context quotes, unclear messaging and exaggerations in this presidential race.

In August, the Biden campaign asked Pennsylvania television stations to remove a Trump campaign ad for airing “inaccurate” claims that Mr. Biden supports a fracking ban.

Darrin Kelly, chair of the Allegheny County Labor Council, said Mr. Biden’s comments — and the Trump campaign’s claims — were nothing new.

“How many times does Joe Biden have to say he doesn’t want to ban fracking?” Mr. Kelly said during a brief phone call Friday. “He’s made his position known multiple, multiple times that he is not going to ban fracking, and we stand behind him. That’s my statement.” 

Daniel Moore: dmoore@post-gazette.com, Twitter @PGdanielmoore. Anya Litvak: alitvak@post-gazette.com.The Associated Press contributed. 

First Published: October 24, 2020, 10:00 a.m.
Updated: October 24, 2020, 12:34 p.m.

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