US presidential election: Fracking divides voters in major battleground state of Pennsylvania

WASHINGTON COUNTY, Pennsylvania: In the sprawling hills of Pennsylvania, fracking has become the top hot button issue.
Oil rigs are dotted across the state. Of its roughly 270,000 oil and gas wells, about 80,000 are producing, with the rest either plugged or abandoned.
Fracking, an extraction process that involves drilling to extract fossil fuels from deep underground, has popped up almost everywhere in this part of the United States.
While it has helped make the country the largest oil and gas producer in the world, it has also become a polarising political point in the US presidential campaign.
This can be felt most strongly in Pennsylvania where the victory path to the White House runs straight through.
The state has 19 Electoral College votes, the most of any battleground state, and has only picked the losing candidate twice. It fell to current Republican nominee and former president Donald Trump in 2016 before turning blue for President Joe Biden in 2020 – both times by the narrowest of margins.
This year, polls suggest the race between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, who is the Democratic Party’s nominee, remains too close to call.
Voters will head to the ballot box on Nov 5.
Both candidates’ positions on fracking have both attracted and alienated Americans, with feelings on all sides running deep in the tussle to turn the razor-tight state red or blue.
Trump has slammed Harris for comments she made during her first bid for the US presidency years ago, when she said there was “no question” that she was “in favour of banning fracking”.
She then made a U-turn in August, swearing off any prior assertion that she opposed the practice.
During the two candidates’ televised debate last month, Trump repeatedly claimed that she would ban fracking if she becomes president. Harris responded that she would not impose such a ban.
Her change in stance sits in stark contrast to Trump’s endorsement.
On Wednesday (Oct 9), he delivered speeches in Pennsylvania where he vowed to unleash American energy.
“On day one, I will tell Pennsylvania energy workers to frack, frack, frack, and drill, drill, drill, baby, drill,” he said.
For Mark Caskey, founder and CEO of Pennsylvania general contractor Steel Nation, Trump’s word was enough to convince him.
He believes a Harris administration would shut his industry down despite oil and gas production rising and reaching record highs under Biden.
As someone whose business relies on and serves the fracking sector, he said he trusts Trump and that life was good during the former president’s first term.
“We had millions upon millions of contracts coming in to build infrastructure for natural gas, and he continued to support industries and exports,” Caskey told CNA.
“We can do whatever we want. We have the energy right under our feet!”
But other Pennsylvania residents want Harris to revert to her original stance due to environmental and health concerns.
This comes as emissions are contributing to climate change, with toxic fumes leading to a higher chance of cancer among locals.
“It’s destroyed a lot of our landscape. It’s polluted our air. It’s polluted our water,” said environmental activist Lois Bower-Bjornson, who is the Southwestern Pennsylvania field organiser for the Clean Air Council, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit.
“It’s ruined communities; it’s divided communities. Neighbours don’t talk to neighbours anymore.”