(Bloomberg) — Vice President Kamala Harris has said she will not stop fracking if elected president, backtracking on her past opposition to the technique currently used to extract most of America’s oil and gas.

“As vice president, I did not ban fracking,” Harris said in an interview on CNN on Thursday, her most definitive statement on the issue since becoming the Democratic nominee. “As president, I will not ban fracking.”

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The issue is a big one for Harris’ campaign, particularly in Pennsylvania, which is both the second-largest U.S. producer of natural gas and a key swing state. Harris’ shifting stance on the issue has provided a powerful line of attack for her Republican rival, Donald Trump, in the Keystone State, where he has presented her positions as part of an extreme approach to energy policy that will cost jobs and raise gas prices.

The U.S. can meet its climate goals without banning fracking, Harris said, pointing to the clean energy incentives in the sweeping Inflation Reduction Act as a way to make progress on this front. The 2022 law has unleashed a wave of investment in the manufacturing and deployment of solar panels, batteries and other advanced technology.

“What that tells me, based on my experience as vice president, is that we can do it without banning fracking,” Harris said.

Questions have been raised about the candidate’s position on the issue, following a statement she made at a CNN presidential forum during her short-lived 2019 bid for the White House. Asked whether she would commit to a ban on fracking on her first day in office, Harris said to applause: “There’s no question that I’m for a ban on fracking.”

Harris later softened her stance, joining President Joe Biden in calling for stricter regulations on the method. Shortly after Biden withdrew from the presidential race in July and Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee, a campaign spokesperson said she would not ban fracking if elected.

Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, involves pumping water, sand and chemicals underground to extract oil and gas from tight rock formations. It is responsible for the vast majority of U.S. oil and gas production today — it is used in about 95 percent of the country’s wells. The process has drawn opposition from environmental groups opposed to fossil fuel production and concerned about groundwater contamination.

Harris’ approach to the issue Thursday appeared to be “an effort to avoid alienating both producer-oriented and climate-conscious voters, particularly in natural gas-heavy Pennsylvania, which has 19 electoral votes,” ClearView Energy Partners LLC said in a research note to clients.

The fracking battle is in many ways symbolic. Without new legislation from Congress, a president’s power to restrict fracking is largely limited to federal lands, and even there it’s far from absolute. But the Biden-Harris administration has imposed policies that limit oil and gas development — and if Harris is elected in November, he would be under pressure to go even further in discouraging fossil fuel production.

“The Biden-Harris administration has used multiple regulatory levers to implement a fracking ban in other ways, and we expect that to continue in a Harris-Walz administration,” said Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance, which represents oil and gas producers. Even without a fracking ban, “the hostility toward oil and natural gas would continue if she is elected, and the regulatory agenda would move forward without a hitch.”

On Thursday, Harris took pains to emphasize her support for the IRA, which included provisions intended to encourage more oil and gas leasing on federal lands and waters. The law required the U.S. Department of the Interior to hold three previously canceled auctions of offshore oil and gas leases. And it made the government’s award of wind and solar rights on federal lands conditional on making more oil and gas leases available for sale.

“I cast the deciding vote that actually raised fracking rents as vice president,” Harris told CNN. “So I know very well where I stand.”

(Adds comments from analysts and the oil group’s president from the ninth paragraph.)

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