By Curtis Williams
HOUSTON – Some top natural gas executives on Tuesday said they believe Vice President Kamala Harris was credible when she pledged to continue to allow natural-gas fracking if she wins the Nov. 5 election to become U.S. president, since the Democratic candidate understands energy prices would rise otherwise.
Fracking, a major industry in battleground state Pennsylvania, has become a big issue in the U.S. presidential campaign. Harris opposed fracking as a U.S. Senator from California, but now she says she would not ban it on federal lands as president.
Her Republican rival, former President Donald Trump, supports fracking and says he believes Harris would seek to ban it.
The head of the largest U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNBG) exporter on Tuesday said Harris had to pivot to being more open to fracking, because natural gas prices would be much higher without it.
Cheniere Energy CEO Jack Fusco, whose Sabine Pass facility in Louisiana is the largest U.S. LNG export plant, said at the GasTech industry conference that he trusts Harris’s support of fracking unless proven otherwise and wants cooler heads to prevail on the energy transition debate.
Woodside CEO Meg O’Neill, whose Australian energy company is buying U.S. LNG plant developer Tellurian, voiced the same rationale.
“If you stop fracking in the U.S., it will be devastating for the economy,” O’Neill said. Harris may not have understood that when she opposed fracking, O’Neill added.
“I suspect the statements she made earlier were made without full understanding of the benefit and potential consequences,” she said.
The executives were interviewed at the GasTech conference in Houston.
Harris is locked in a tight race with Trump, and both are campaigning hard in the battleground state of Pennsylvania, one of the nation’s largest producers of natural gas.
(Reporting by Curtis Williams; writing by Peter Henderson; Editing by David Gregorio)
