On the lawns of suburban suburbs in Pennsylvania, signs in favor of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris sit side by side. Here, in the cradle of American democracy, there are many undecided people. The state, home of Philadelphia, the first American capital and where the declaration of independence and the country’s Constitution were signed, attracts all eyes. Because Pennsylvania is a “swing state” and, with its 19 electors, probably the most important of all…
In 2016, Donald Trump managed to seduce this state by proclaiming his love of drilling. Historically Democratic, Pennsylvania then fell into the arms of the real estate magnate, seduced by this uninhibited support for “fracking”, a particularly contested method of extracting hydrocarbons. Eight years later, the slogan of the candidate for the White House remains the same on the lands of shale gas: “Drill, baby, drill!” » (“Drill, baby, drill!”).
More natural gas than Qatar
Fracking consists of fracturing rock with a liquid under very high pressure to extract gas or oil, at the risk of polluting water and emitting large quantities of methane, a gas more than 80 times warmer for the atmosphere. terrestrial than CO2. “In many countries around the world, unlike the United States, fracking is banned because this method of extracting hydrocarbons is extremely polluting, much more so than conventional extraction,” explains Yves Cochet, co-founder of the Greens and author of Oil apocalypse (Ed. Fayard, 2005). This is the case in France, which banned this practice in 2011.
Despite its bad press, gas extraction, particularly shale, is massive in Pennsylvania. Between 2007, the year of its development, and 2023, more than 14,000 unconventional wells* were dug in the state, according to the NGO FracTracker, which monitors data related to the oil and gas industry. In 2022, Joe Biden’s state of birth produced more natural gas than Qatar, knowing that the United States is now the world’s leading producer.
At the heart of the black gold rush
This financial windfall is significant for a state where nearly one in eight residents is in a situation of food insecurity, according to the NGO Feeding America. Pennsylvania is in fact at the heart of the “rust bell”, the rust belt, where deindustrialization has plunged thousands of people into poverty. Not surprisingly, “in its infancy in 2008, fracking promised to support rural areas of the state that suffered from a lack of economic opportunities. And indeed, it has created jobs and attracted investment to the region,” explains Murray Fallk, doctoral student at the University of Cambridge and author of the thesis. Population change and fracking : An examination of Pennsylvania and New York.
“Pennsylvania has a long tradition of mining. It is a very old state with an industrial and oil tradition,” recalls Yves Cochet. To fully understand the intricacy between the capital of Philly steak and oil, we have to go back to 1859, to Titusville. It was in this small town in the northwest of the state, where sawmills continually devoured wood in the mid-19th century, that a man changed the face of Pennsylvania, then that of the entire world. Colonel Drake manages to drill the first real American oil well, causing a rush for black gold.
Tap water… flammable
Inspired by this legend – which nevertheless left Edwin Drake penniless, because he had forgotten to patent his drilling system – many Americans turned to extraction in the hope of getting rich. “In the United States, you own everything from the basement of your property to the center of the Earth! You can therefore decide to drill for underground resources in your own garden,” explains Yves Cochet. Enough to attract desire, but also cause some neighborhood tensions.
If “the industry and its supporters assure that it is a safe process, I have seen the harmful effects of fracking when it is poorly carried out”, testifies Murray Fallk. He cites in particular the case of the residents of Dimock, a small town in the northeast of the state, “where some have not had drinking water for decades” because of pollution. “Residents in the region frequently report health effects such as nosebleeds, skin rashes or respiratory problems,” he adds.
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Regularly, images of residents, close to these boreholes, being able to light the water from their tap using a lighter or a match, resurface. For convenience or economy, “some operators do not plug the wells, leading to uncontrolled leaks of oil and gas,” explains Yves Cochet. And he adds that the risk of these wells being abandoned is multiplied in the case of fracking because “if conventional wells last twenty, thirty, even forty years, unconventional wells only last a few years”. According to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, one in ten violations recorded between 2007 and 2023 involved the failure to plug an abandoned well.
Swallowing the color of gas and oil
Pennsylvanians are divided on the issue of fracking. According to a survey conducted in 2022, 48% of them say they are in favor of this extraction method and 44% are opposed to it. Kamala Harris, then in the running for the Democratic primary, wanted to ban fracking in 2020. But she has since largely returned to this proposal. She now repeatedly repeats her support for fracking, praising the country’s “largest increase in national oil production in the history” under Joe Biden’s mandate. “It’s completely electoralist,” reacts Yves Cochet. If she does not want to lose Pennsylvania, Kamala Harris is forced to swallow the snake of bedrock gas and oil, because there are too many people who depend on it in this state. »
” I think that Donald Trump and Kamala Harris fear that any issue could be decisive in Pennsylvania, as the race is so close. And they both seem to believe that the Pennsylvania electorate supports this industry,” slips Murray Fallk. In 2020, Joe Biden won his home state with 50.01% of the vote. A largely insufficient margin to dare attack an industry that supports half a million people in Pennsylvania.
* Unlike drilling, which only uses the fracking method
