Fact Check: Kamala Harris Claims Biden-Harris Administration Ramped Up Oil Production Adam Schultz/White House via Flickr

Claim: Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday claimed that the Biden-Harris administration has ramped up oil production.

Verdict: False. The Biden-Harris administration has actively worked to curb domestic oil production.

Former President Donald Trump said during Tuesday’s presidential debate that Harris has floated banning fracking.

Harris said in response, “My values have not changed. My position is we have got to invest in diverse sources of energy so we reduce our reliance on foreign oil. We have had the largest increase of domestic oil production in history.”

“Fracking? She’s been against it for 12 years. She wants to confiscate your guns and she will never allow fracking in Pennsylvania,” Trump said during the debate in Philadelphia.

The Biden-Harris administration actively worked to suspend oil and gas production.

Early in the administration, President Joe Biden ordered the secretary of the Interior Department to halt new oil and natural gas leases on public lands and waters, and review existing permits for fossil fuel development.

“Penalizing the oil and gas industry kills good-paying American jobs, hurts our already struggling economy, makes our country more reliant on foreign energy sources, and impacts those who rely on affordable and reliable energy,” Anne Bradbury, president of the American Exploration and Production Council, said in a statement in early 2021.

In 2023, the Biden-Harris administration canceled oil leases sold by the Trump administration in the Alaskan wildlife refuge and blocked new drilling.

Politico reported in 2023:

Under the measures announced Wednesday, the Interior Department would revoke the ANWR leases sold by the Trump administration shortly before it left office. And it would propose banning drilling from 10.6 million acres inside the National Petroleum Reserve along the state’s North Slope — about 40 percent of total acreage in the reserve — while limiting drilling activity in another 2.6 million acres there. Those areas are home to significant intact habitat for wildlife, including grizzly and polar bears, caribou and hundreds of thousands of migratory birds, the agency said.

“[Biden administration officials] love to talk about racial equity, racial justice, environmental justice, taking care of people of color, but one big exception — the Indigenous people of Alaska. They screw ‘em every time,” Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AR) said in 2023.

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