ERIE, Pa. — Grilled chicken breast, baby tomatoes and couscous were served for lunch at the 2024 Shale Insight Conference this week.
So was Democratic Sen. Bob Casey.
For three days, oil and gas workers from Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia gathered in Erie to network and discuss the future of their industry, from new drilling technology to geopolitics.
The senator and his Republican challenger, Dave McCormick, both made their pitches in this northwestern Pennsylvania center Thursday to the fracking industry, which is vital to the economy in the battleground state.
A swath of recent polls finds McCormick closing in on Casey; a Monmouth University survey released Friday shows the Democrat with just a 4-point lead among registered voters.
While McCormick came in person to deliver his vision of energy dominance, Casey showed face via prerecorded video.
Among industry brass, there was no contest.
“If you don’t have a seat at the table, you’re on the menu. And McCormick just ate him up,” attendee Jim Milleson told The Post.
Milleson, president of the Ohio Valley Energy Association, is a Democrat and said he’d vote for Casey if he lived in Pennsylvania.
Still, the no-show senator didn’t do himself any favors with frackers this week.
“I was disappointed Casey didn’t show up,” he added.
In his on-screen screed, Casey paid lip service to the oil and natural-gas industry for creating good-paying jobs and promoting US energy independence.
He also emphasized tax credits aimed at incentivizing the energy industry to open up shop in natural-gas and coal-mining communities and challenged the Biden-Harris administration to expand hydrogen-production tax credits.
“I’ll keep pushing, pushing hard the administration until they get this right,” Casey said.
But the video ended without applause, and attendees told The Post both the message and the medium left them unimpressed.
“I viewed his speech and his support of the industry as mainly a façade,” said Nick Hannan, who works in designing oil and gas rigs in central Pennsylvania.
He admitted he didn’t think highly of Casey prior.
“He didn’t seem genuine. He definitely was reading. He was swaying back and forth,” said Curt Brooks, who works in oil and gas marketing in Monroeville, Pa.
Milleson suspects Casey sent a video assuming attendees wouldn’t vote for him in the first place.
“You can’t make a difference if you’re not willing to come. He said the right things, but the message was not received.”
McCormick, on the other hand, showed up in full force Thursday, introduced to the crowd as an Iraq War veteran with a sterling career spanning government and the private sector.
He took to the podium swinging.
“I had the opportunity to see Senator Casey phone in, and I am happy to see him making an energy transition,” he told the hundreds in the hall.
“Don’t believe it.”
McCormick also resurrected Vice President Kamala Harris’s past pledge to ban hydraulic fracturing, the procedure that uses water, sand or chemicals to extract oil and natural gas from underground rock formations.
Pennsylvania is America’s second-largest natural-gas producer, behind Texas. Fracking supports around 123,000 jobs in the Keystone State and spurred $41 billion in economic activity in 2022.
Vying for Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral votes this November, the veep now says she will not ban the fractious practice.
And while oil production under the Biden-Harris team has finally surpassed that under former President Donald Trump, the administration blocked the Keystone XL pipeline and paused liquified-natural-gas exports into foreign markets — adding fuel to McCormick’s fire.
“Casey has endorsed this travesty,” McCormick said, citing the Democratic incumbent’s record voting with the Biden-Harris administration.
McCormick laid out his bold energy plans: slash regulation and reform permitting, support nuclear power alongside natural gas, restore clean-energy supply chains and increase cross-border energy flows.
“America, led by Pennsylvania, must become the world’s most energy-dominant nation,” he proclaimed. “North America can and should be an energy powerhouse that can compete head to head with OPEC.”
Much like it began, McCormick’s speech concluded with roaring applause.
“It was like a sports team playing in their home stadium,” Milleson said.
