Fractured majority

Shale gas could blow up US politics. It is already playing a big part in the upcoming mid-term elections. Coal's downfall is an important issue in one race that could swing the Senate Republican. Fracking-related jobs and manufacturing could rock future votes.

The seat being vacated by Jay Rockefeller in West Virginia is a prime example of how the shifting carbon landscape is reverberating at the ballot box. GOP challenger Shelley Moore Capito has built a big lead over Democrat Natalie Tennant in part by tying her to President Barack Obama's energy and environmental policies, which favour gas over coal. It could turn out to be a decisive congressional referendum for the next two years.

Proposed rules that crack down on greenhouse emissions are certainly bad news for the smog-inducing fuel. The so-called "war on coal," however, only amounts to a final dagger for an industry felled by broader market forces.

Booming supplies of cheap gas, extracted using horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, are mainly to blame for an 18 per cent decline in US coal consumption between 2008 and 2013. Ultra-low gas prices also prompted electric utilities to replace coal long before Obama's new rules came about. Demand for coal used in steel manufacturing also has slumped, thanks to an industrial slowdown in China.

For a while, US producers offset the pain by shipping excess supplies abroad. Total exports have fallen by more than a third since 2012, according to the Energy Information Administration. More efficient operators in Indonesia and Australia have been stealing business from US rivals, which need to charge higher prices for their older, picked-over mines to turn a profit.

Shale's combustible effect on US politics probably will extend beyond this year's Senate race, too. Booming petroleum production is already affecting geopolitics by curbing US reliance on Middle Eastern crude. A flood of fracking-related jobs and lower energy costs also may reshape debates by boosting employment in shale-rich states and revitalising domestic manufacturing.

As with coal, such developments have more to do with capitalist tendencies than policy ones. Such facts, though, rarely get in the way of a good election campaign story.