Colorado also sees ban on fracking as disastrous to state's economy

Denver Post:

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders has called for an immediate ban on fracking and the end of drilling on federal lands as a way to combat global climate change, a message that resonated in Colorado, where he won Tuesday’s Democratic presidential primary.

But the American Petroleum Institute argues that Sanders’ policies, if implemented, would deal a crushing blow to the Colorado economy, eliminating 353,218 jobs directly and indirectly.

That might explain why the industry is breathing a little easier after former Vice President Joe Biden’s strong performance on Tuesday. Biden’s campaign, although it has at times called for a fracking ban, has advocated tighter regulations, especially on methane emissions, and a more gradual transition.

“He has a more nuanced approach,” said Mike Sommers, president and CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, on a visit to Denver on Thursday.

Sommers said 95% of wells drilled in the U.S. rely on hydraulic fracturing, which injects water, sand and chemical lubricants under high pressure to fracture rock and release more petroleum. Fracking combined with horizontal drilling have greatly boosted U.S. production, including in the D-J Basin northeast of Denver.

Any ban would effectively kill off new activity and come with devastating economic consequences, with Colorado being one of the hardest-hit states, he said. The country could lose 7.5 million of the 10.9 million jobs the industry now supports and suffer a reduction in GDP of $1.2 trillion by 2022, which would trigger a recession, according to an economic analysis the API conducted on a fracking ban.

On a percentage basis, the states taking the biggest employment hit would be North Dakota, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Wyoming, Louisiana, West Virginia, Kansas and Colorado.

Given that oil and gas jobs tend to pay above-average wages, the study estimated household incomes nationally would decline an average of $5,040 a year, or 4.3% and consumers would spend $618 more a year in energy costs.

Sanders, in his Green New Deal, wants to switch electricity generation and transportation to all renewable energy sources by 2030 and make the U.S. economy carbon-free by 2050. The plan says that the transition will generate 20 million jobs, with special attention paid to workers in impacted industries.
...

It is not clear why they left Texas off of the states being impacted since the largest production is in the Permian Basin of Texas.  Sanders would replace oil and gas with less efficient and less reliable alternative energy.  It is also more vulnerable to extreme weather which would especially impact states that get a lot of freezing temperatures which hampers windmills and snow which covers solar collectors.  People in the upper Midwest could suffer life-threatening cold if they had to rely on alternative energy.  Also, batteries become less effective in the cold which would mean transportation would also be limited if people were forced into electric cars and trucks. 

Stopping the production of oil and gas would also have a devasting impact on the educational institutions that rely on it for their tax base.  The job loses would have a cascading impact on the rest of the economy with the likelihood of foreclosures on houses that would crater the housing market for people in the energy sector.  It would also have a negative impact on retail sales.

The Biden impact would also be negative and return us to the weak Obama economy.