Kamala Harris says she's supported increased fossil fuel leases as vice president. Oil and gas leasing, however, has fallen to historic lows under the Biden-Harris administration, according to federal data.
"Dana, excuse me," Harris told CNN's Dana Bash during her first interview as the Democratic presidential nominee. "I cast the tie-breaking vote that actually increased leases for fracking as vice president. So I'm very clear about where I stand."
The federal government is required under federal statute to offer oil and gas leases through regular auctions. It doesn't offer "fracking leases," though the leases it offers can use the method of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a common method of drilling used to reach tight-oil resources.
Harris's comment is an apparent reference to when she voted in favor of the Inflation Reduction Act—which included modest oil and gas provisions—in August 2022 to break the Senate's 50-50 partisan deadlock on the legislation. As the Senate's presiding officer, the vice president is empowered to cast tie-breaking votes in the chamber.
According to data published by the Bureau of Land Management, however, the number of acres offered for fossil fuel leasing and acreage ultimately issued, in addition to the number of leases issued, has plummeted under the current administration. Those leases can include those for fracking.
Between 2021 and 2023, the Biden-Harris administration offered 422,085 acres, issued 415,602 acres, and issued 671 leases for the purpose of onshore drilling, the data show. Those figures represented staggering declines of 98 percent, 91 percent, and 84 percent, respectively, compared with the Trump administration's first three years in office.
And while the difference compared with the Trump administration is particularly stark, the Biden-Harris administration has offered 97 percent fewer acres, issued 87 percent fewer acres, and issued 81 percent fewer leases than the Obama administration did during the first three years of its second term.
"Despite VP Harris trying to pretend she's been consistently in favor of fracking, American, and especially Pennsylvanian, voters know it's a recent stance meant to win an election," Kathleen Sgamma, the president of the Western Energy Alliance, said in a statement to the Washington Free Beacon.
"Having said that, the Biden-Harris Administration has used multiple regulatory levers to all but enact a fracking ban by other means and we would expect a continuation into a Harris-Walz administration," Sgamma continued.
Sgamma added that, if Harris is elected, hostility to oil and gas would continue and that the "regulatory agenda would march on without skipping a beat."
While the Inflation Reduction Act is primarily a climate-focused bill—it includes hundreds of billions of dollars for green energy handouts and programs aimed at rapidly decarbonizing the entire United States economy—its lead author, Sen. Joe Manchin (I., W.Va.), made sure to include provisions with some oil and gas requirements.
Those provisions mandate that the Department of the Interior move forward with four major offshore oil and gas lease sales that the Biden-Harris administration abruptly canceled earlier in 2022. The legislation also tethers any new green energy leases to fossil fuel leases, meaning the government must auction off a certain amount of land for oil and gas drilling if it issues permits for solar or wind development on public lands.
The Biden-Harris administration has still substantially pared back the federal oil and gas leasing program: It has blocked off large swaths of land from development, issued new restrictions on leased land declined to hold onshore lease sales on a quarterly basis, and finalized the most restrictive offshore leasing plan in U.S. history.
While Harris's campaign now claims she doesn't back a fracking ban, the vice president has supported such policies for years.
"There's no question, I'm in favor of banning fracking," Harris said during a town hall while running for president in 2019. Two weeks later, the then-senator even joined the Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon for a segment in which she stated that she would finally put "an end to fracking once and for all."
While running for Senate four years earlier, Harris remarked that she was "very skeptical" of fracking, the Sacramento Bee reported at the time.
And, in September 2016, Harris as attorney general of California sued the Obama administration for issuing an environmental assessment that opened the door to fracking off the state's coast. According to her office, the assessment failed to recognize "substantial evidence" about the dangers and "unique risks" posed by fracking.
The Harris campaign didn't respond to a request for comment.