PITTSBURGH>> For much of the American shale boom of the last two decades, natural gas producers found that the more they pumped, the more demand grew, as cheaper gas displaced coal.

But here in Pennsylvania — home to one of the largest U.S. gas deposits and a critical prize in the presidential election — that is no longer the case.

The state’s hilly southwest, where gas extends beneath homes and river valleys, is so awash in the fuel that prices have cratered, drilling has slowed and thousands of jobs have disappeared.

While Pennsylvania and energy policy are contested battlegrounds between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, the bleak reality of the gas business in the state has been obscured by sparring over horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as fracking.

Trump supports fracking, and Harris, who called for banning fracking in 2019, recently said she no longer opposes the practice.

For many voters in the Appalachian region of Pennsylvania, the key question is not how to produce more natural gas, but how to build the infrastructure necessary to get it to places like New England and the Gulf Coast where it is likely to fetch higher prices.

“Domestically, the biggest issue we have is we don’t have a use for it,” said Matt Kurzejewski, CEO of Costy’s Energy Services, a natural gas services company based in northern Pennsylvania.

Kurzejewski, 33, plans to vote for Trump, as he did in 2016 and 2020, figuring that the former president would do less to hamstring the industry. Still, Kurzejewski added that “drill, baby, drill,” the slogan embraced by Trump, “is not the answer.”

There is no easy fix for Pennsylvania’s gas glut. Pipelines often cross state lines, requiring support not just from federal regulators but also from local communities and officials in other states. Oil and gas infrastructure has become particularly hotly contested as many people worry about the environmental and health impacts of pipelines and related equipment. In some Northeastern states, residents and elected leaders are also wary of becoming locked into using fossil fuels that are contributing to climate change.

The president has even less control over other energy issues being fiercely debated in southwestern Pennsylvania, including how close to homes companies should be allowed to drill for gas.

The area has shifted right over the years, leaving Allegheny County, home to Pittsburgh, an island of blue in a vast red region where heavy industry extends into lush, rolling farmland. Fortunes here rose and fell with coal and steel making, which have been in decline for decades.

Pennsylvania’s shale boom began in the 2000s, and today natural gas wells are tucked away on farms and in suburban neighborhoods, stretching north from the state’s border with West Virginia, then curling east toward Binghamton, N.Y.

What happens to gas prices matters to many people here, not just energy executives and their employees. More than one-third of Pennsylvanians live in counties with shale wells.

Brian Hrutkay’s family agreed years ago to lease the rights to drill for gas under their farm, where Hrutkay now raises cattle and grows corn. In exchange, he gets a royalty check each month. But the payments vary based on the price of gas.

Natural gas prices in southwest Pennsylvania have plunged some 80% over the past two years, after surging to $9 per million British thermal units in August 2022, after Russia invaded Ukraine, according to S&P Global Commodity Insights. Gas has traded around $1.50 this month.

As a result, Hrutkay’s checks have diminished, forcing him to delay building new storage facilities for hay and farm equipment.

“We don’t have the infrastructure to move enough gas away,” said Hrutkay, 51. “It’s frustrating to me.”

Companies have all but given up on the prospect of laying new long-haul pipelines in the Northeast after earlier projects got bogged down in permitting and legal challenges. North American natural-gas export capacity is poised to more than double this decade. But without new pipelines most new export terminals will be tantalizingly out of reach for producers in Pennsylvania and in Ohio and West Virginia — a gas region known as the Marcellus.

Pennsylvania’s frackers are throttling production and slowing new development. State gas output in the first half of the year fell to its lowest level since 2020, federal estimates show. In the second quarter, companies drilled fewer wells than they had during any quarter since 2008, at the dawn of the shale boom, according to the Pennsylvania Independent Fiscal Office.

The industry’s slowdown has caused bipartisan concern in gas-producing areas. Natural gas companies — which generally line up behind Republicans — forged alliances with organized labor, which typically backs Democrats.

Last year, oil and gas employment in Pennsylvania slid to its lowest level in at least a decade, to fewer than 20,000 jobs from nearly 35,000 in 2014, according to an analysis of federal data by ClearView Energy Partners, a research firm based in Washington.

“We have the resources, but we’re not thinking ahead and utilizing them,” said Kenneth J. Broadbent, business manager for Steamfitters Local 449 in the Pittsburgh area, which he described as “good friends” with the natural gas industry.

Polling shows Pennsylvanians divided on whether to allow fracking in the state, though the practice has grown more popular over time, according to the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion in Allentown, Pa.

As of 2022, 48% of survey respondents supported natural gas extraction, while 44% opposed it, Muhlenberg’s polling shows. While 86% said fracking was important to the state’s economy, roughly two-thirds said it put water resources at risk.

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh recently found that people with asthma who live near actively producing natural gas wells had a higher chance of experiencing asthma attacks. They also found that children who lived within a mile of a well were at higher risk for lymphoma, but did not find links between shale development and other childhood cancers.

The Environmental Protection Agency has found that fracking has sometimes hurt drinking water quantity and quality, in part because of spills and well integrity failures.

Michelle Stonemark, a 45-year-old financial professional who lives outside Pittsburgh, has pushed for stricter limits on fracking in residential neighborhoods after Range Resources started drilling for gas a little more than 500 feet from her home. The wells are on her neighbor’s property, and Stonemark, who works from home, doesn’t own the rights to the gas beneath her land.

In the winter, after the trees lose their leaves, Stonemark can see through her kitchen window to the khaki-colored sound barriers that surround the well site. Some days, the drilling was so intense that her dishes rattled. Occasionally, she has smelled diesel or rotten eggs, making her nervous about letting her children play outside.

“I understand the need, I do,” Stonemark said, describing herself as a lifelong Republican. “I just want it out of residential areas.”

Stonemark plans to vote for Harris because of her concerns about women’s rights, including access to abortion. She has also become more interested in environmental policy, though rules about how close drilling can be to homes are set by the state and local authorities, not the federal government.

Range, which is based in Fort Worth, Texas, said it is safely developing natural gas in Pennsylvania and monitors both sound levels and air quality.

“We understand there are times of potential inconvenience, and have employees dedicated to addressing and alleviating those matters,” a spokesperson for Range, Mark Windle, said in a statement.

Harris — like many Democrats who have succeeded recently in Pennsylvania — has sought to thread the needle on fracking, saying she doesn’t oppose the practice while also promoting the Biden administration’s investments in cleaner forms of energy.

In her debate with Trump this month, she spoke of the surge in U.S. oil production under the Biden administration. Lauren Hitt, a Harris campaign spokesperson, said the vice president is focused on ensuring Americans have both good jobs and clean air and water. Trump’s policies, she said, would “enrich oil and gas executives at the expense of the middle class.”

In addition to promising more drilling, Trump has said he would “blast through every bureaucratic hurdle” to approve new pipelines and other energy infrastructure.

He also pledged to lower energy costs by at least half. While many analysts say presidents have limited sway over commodity prices, a big drop in prices could further pressure gas producers and those who rely on royalty payments.

“At every opportunity, President Trump calls for ‘unleashing American energy,’ ” a campaign spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt, said in a statement. She added that Harris’ energy policies had put “natural gas production and natural gas investments on the road to extinction.”

Hrutkay, the farmer, runs his business on diesel and is keen to see prices for that fuel fall further. Yet he also wants higher natural gas prices — and said he thought Trump stood a better chance of lifting demand and prices.

Hrutkay’s desires reflect the complexity of energy politics. Everyone uses energy and generally benefits when prices fall or are low. But higher prices typically help people in the oil and gas business.

Still, even in western Pennsylvania, energy isn’t the deciding factor for all voters.

Take Bob Smith, who owns more than 300 acres near Hrutkay and has also leased some of his land for gas production. More than 20 wells have been drilled over the hill behind his barns. Smith, 72, voted for Trump in 2020, but said he wasn’t sure he would do so again. Low natural gas prices won’t be a big factor in his decision, which he said would be based more on the candidates’ plans for reining in spending and addressing the national debt.

“I don’t know how much the president — how much they really have to do with this scenario that we have,” Smith said of low gas prices. “It takes more than just them.”