Biden’s Natural Gas Pause Could Complicate Pennsylvania Strategy

The Biden administration’s pause on natural gas exports is putting the president in a complicated political situation in Pennsylvania, one of the key swing states in November.

Pennsylvania was one of the biggest beneficiaries of the last decade’s U.S. natural gas boom. The state’s production reached 7.5 trillion cubic feet in 2022, the second-highest in the country behind Texas, according to data from the Energy Information Administration. The consultancy firm FTI Consulting estimates that the sector supports around 123 thousand jobs in the state.

The administration earlier this year suspended new liquefied natural gas (LNG) export licenses while it analyzes their impact on climate change, something Republicans are sure to attack in a state where Biden is not just running head-to-head with the former president. Trump, but also where Democrats seek to maintain a critical Senate seat.

“This is one of those issues that the Democratic Party is divided on, it depends on what state you are in and what part of the state you are in,” said Samuel Chen, a Republican political strategist based in Pennsylvania. “I think it’s an albatross in the sense that if he leans more toward the climate side of the party, he’s going to lose people in those industries… [but] if it leans the other way, it risks isolating the environmental side.”

Trump has long sought to associate Biden with supporting a ban on fracking, the process responsible for the state’s natural gas boom. While Biden’s official campaign platform never proposed a ban, the GOP candidate criticized him on the issue in the 2020 presidential debates, bringing up Biden’s comments about the need to “make sure it’s eliminated” and that if opposed the “new fracking”.

No new proposed bans materialized while Biden was president. However, the administration’s pause on LNG export licenses has drawn criticism from the Republican Party and caused some Democrats in the state, including Sen. Bob Casey, who is running for re-election, to distance themselves from the White House on the issue.

“While the immediate impacts in Pennsylvania remain to be seen, we have concerns about the long-term impacts this pause will have on the thousands of jobs in Pennsylvania’s natural gas industry,” Casey and Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) said in a joint statement in February. “If this decision puts Pennsylvania energy jobs at risk, we will pressure the Biden administration to reverse this decision.”

Casey has consistently polled ahead of Biden in the state and currently leads his Republican opponent, David McCormack, by 7 points in a set of polls from The Hill and Decision Desk HQ. Meanwhile, Biden trails Trump by about 1 point, 47 to 48 percent support, in the same aggregate.

Casey “[has] it will be easier to follow that line” because Pennsylvanians are his only constituency, Chen noted. “For President Biden, you are running in 50 states and the District of Columbia. What works in Pennsylvania may not work in Georgia.”

Mike Mikus, a Pittsburgh-based Democratic strategist, called Casey’s dissent from Biden on the issue “smart politics.”

“When you run statewide in Pennsylvania, you always please voters whenever you show some independence, regardless of the issue,” he told The Hill.

In any case, Democrats doubt the issue will significantly harm Biden.

“I’m actually very confident that the president will win Pennsylvania,” Fetterman told The Hill. “[But] it will be very close and Trump is very popular in Pennsylvania. I don’t think natural gas is a defining issue there.”

“Bob Casey and I disagree on” the decision, Fetterman added, but “we are able to be very committed partners in taking Pennsylvania and achieving a victory.”

Mikus echoed Fetterman’s sentiments.

“Whether I’m President Biden or his campaign team, I’m not too concerned – natural gas is important in Pennsylvania, but this issue – there have been political fights going back 15 years over this issue,” Mikus said. “I think people who have strong feelings one way or another have already chosen a side.”

Younger, more progressive voters, voters who rank the environment as a top priority, and the combination of the three were an important part of the coalition that secured Biden’s 2020 victory.

Many of the president’s early moves, such as a now-ended moratorium on new oil and gas leases on public lands and the appointment of Deb Haaland as Interior secretary, were applauded in these circles.

However, throughout his presidency, he frustrated them with measures such as approving a massive oil drilling project in Alaska, and many of these younger voters also became disillusioned with his response to a non-environmental issue, war. in Gaza.

More recently, Biden has taken steps that have drawn better criticism from the party’s environmental wing, including pausing LNG and restricting oil extraction across a wide swath of the Arctic. In remarks for Earth Day last week, he shared the stage with the party’s leading progressive voices, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (DN.Y.).

In the end, Mikus said, the political polarization that has occurred in national politics may end up blunting the impact of the natural gas decision in Pennsylvania.

“I think it’s a direct result of the over-the-top attacks that Republicans have been using against Democrats for years” on environmental issues, he said. “If [voters] They strongly supported, gravitated towards the Republican Party and remained there.”