Candidate Joe Biden was against fracking, before he was for it. All in one year. But only for fracking ( hydraulic fracturing for oil and natural gas exploration and production ) while campaigning in Pennsylvania. Kamala Harris is against fracking. At the second Presidential debate, that Trump won easily, in my opinion, he got Biden to take a stand against fossil fuels and fracking, which apparently doesn't apply when Biden is in Pennsylvania.
Maybe Joe Biden is telling the truth, for a change, when he says he won’t “ban” fracking. Not with an executive order -- that would not work. Even If Democrats seized the Senate, in January 2021, a legislative ban would be politically risky for the 2022 elections. But a Biden Administration could slow, and eventually end, fracking, by using stricter environmental regulations.
Biden has pledged to outlaw drilling on federal lands. That would affect 8% of all U.S. oil production, 9% of gas production, and 6% of natural gas liquids production. He will reverse President Trump’s deregulation, which included a rollback of an Obama Administration Environmental Protection Agency rule, requiring the oil-and-gas industry to pay to limit methane leaks from fracking wells.
The big oil companies support that Obama rule because it will force many struggling independent frackers to close, or sell themselves to larger companies at bargain prices. The larger companies could then reduce the oil glut by slowing their fracking production, to increase oil and gas prices. Small frackers could not afford to do that.
The Obama Administration’s destroyed almost all the market value of the coal industry by 2016. Obama’s EPA issued air-quality rules that made existing coal power plants too expensive to operate. Another rule banned new coal plants, unless they were built with nonexistent technology to capture and store CO2 emissions.
The Obama Interior Department issued a rule prohibiting coal mining within a certain distance of streams. That prevented miners from using efficient long-wall underground mining technology. Which raised operating costs a lot. The Labor Department tightened dust standards in mines, raising costs for underground mines even more.
There is no domestic substitute for natural gas and oil fracking. During the Obama years, power plants could switch from coal to natural gas, during his war on the coal industry. The Supreme Court did freeze Obama rules, pending review. But the damage to the coal industry was already done. The Obama attacks on coal mining operations, and coal customers, were by unaccountable regulatory agencies. Those attacks, combined with lots of new natural gas available from fracking, crushed the coal industry, sending all major producers into bankruptcy.
New Biden Administration (I get sick from just typing that) rules attacking fracking could NOT be bypassed by electric utilities switching out of natural gas, back to coal, this time. Not during a Biden Administration!