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Could locally drilled natural gas get more expensive under Trump?

A clearing with six cylindrical structures making up a natural gas well pad, with a stand of trees in the background.
Reid R. Frazier
/
The Allegheny Front
Pittsburgh-headquartered natural gas producer EQT's Lumber well pad, in Springhill Township, Greene County, Pennsylvania.

Exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from western Pennsylvania are expected to increase in the next few years, and under President-elect Donald Trump’s administration, the industry may get an extra boost. Pittsburgh-headquartered EQT is one of the largest natural gas producers in the U.S., and the company has launched a significant campaign to “unleash” LNG exports. It’s a trajectory that some economists say could increase gas prices both abroad and domestically.

PublicSource’s climate and environment reporter Quinn Glabicki has reported extensively on EQT, covering West Virginia families whose health may be impacted by living near EQT drilling operations, whether shale gas is a climate solution or greenwashing and EQT’s charismatic president and CEO, Toby Rice.

Glabicki spoke with 90.5 WESA’s Susan Scott Peterson about Rice’s rise in the fossil fuel industry, how Trump’s campaign promises could benefit EQT and how an increase in LNG exports could make locally produced natural gas more expensive for Pennsylvanians.

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This transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Susan Scott Peterson: You recently published a story about the president and CEO of the natural gas producer EQT, a man named Toby Rice. That story was actually part of a larger series. What piqued your interest in this series on EQT to begin with?

Quinn Glabicki: I first became introduced to EQT after there was a fracking accident down in Greene County, Pennsylvania. It’s this very rural place. I spent a day down there talking to residents who immediately reported contaminated water, problems with rashes after showering, chemical smells in their water.

So [EQT] was always kind of on my radar. And the first story in the series explored how the company has impacted four families in a place called Knob Fork, West Virginia. It's a tiny little hollow in Wetzel County, West Virginia.

There's no secret that people have complained about the health impacts while living next to natural gas extraction. But what we saw in Knob Fork was four families, 12 members, who reported at the same time, same symptoms. They were doing urine and hair tests which showed the same chemical compounds that are [reportedly identified as] being released by EQT in that hollow.

And so, I began to look into EQT because they, until very recently, were the largest natural gas producer in the United States, and they're headquartered right here in downtown Pittsburgh.

It sounds like this first story was really about impacts in the local community, impacts to individuals, families. But this latest story is about the president and CEO, Toby Rice. What can you tell me about this guy? What is he like?

I've only met him once, very briefly. EQT declined to make him available [for this story], but Toby Rice has become one of the most influential fossil fuel executives in America.

At the very beginning of the fracking boom, he started a company called Rice Energy, and that was kind of his introduction to the oil and gas industry. That company was then acquired by EQT in 2018 and Rice staged a hostile takeover and a proxy battle and eventually emerged in 2019 at the helm of the largest natural gas producer in the United States.

It sounds like he's a pretty charismatic, assertive person.

He is. For this story, I interviewed his college baseball coach, who described him as a bulldog, [and as] someone who hates to lose more than they love to win.

And he's someone who has also been described as evangelical when it comes to natural gas. He's traveled to the European Union, meeting with the top energy official in the E.U. He's traveled to Washington, D.C. He's dined with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, essentially making the argument that we need more gas.

He's also led a pretty robust public relations campaign when it comes to making the argument that fracked gas from the Marcellus Shale a climate solution, rather than a climate foe.

I wonder if you can tell me about the position that Rice finds himself in now that Donald Trump is going to be president again.

Well, Trump has embraced this mantra of, “Drill, baby, drill,” during his campaign. He's promised to gut the [U.S. Environmental Protection Agency] and roll back regulations that rein in carbon pollution. For the fossil fuel industry at large, that's a good thing.

[Trump has] also promised to embrace exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) abroad. And that's been at the center of Toby Rice's campaign. He's called it "Unleash U.S. LNG." He goes around to the company's most heavily fracked counties, which include Greene and Washington County here in Pennsylvania, making the argument that American gas exports are … lifting people from energy poverty and combating the role of petro-dictators like Vladimir Putin on the world stage. [He also argues American gas exports] are replacing foreign coal and therefore helping us reach our climate goals.

I've interviewed many top climate scientists who express really serious doubts about that.

Can you tell me about some of those doubts?

They say the solution to climate change, which is caused by fossil fuels, cannot be more fossil fuels. While it’s true that natural gas has a lower carbon footprint than something like coal, there are certain studies that have been released that indicate that the life cycle emissions of LNG—where you're transporting it, you're putting it on a boat, sending it across the seas—[make LNG unlikely] to help us reach our climate goals.

[Regarding this idea of] unleashing LNG exports: Are they limited right now?

No. Prior to 2016, the U.S. wasn't exporting any LNG. Since then, we've become the number one LNG exporter in the world. That's already set to double by 2027. And Rice says that's not enough.

Let’s imagine that this trajectory continues, that we export more and more LNG, especially after Donald Trump takes office. What could be the impacts here in Pennsylvania?

Since the advent of the fracking revolution, there’s been this almost implicit agreement between people who live here and the industry where we are on some levels willing to accept the environmental implications of fracking, whether that's air quality issues or water quality issues, in exchange for cheap homegrown energy.

But I spoke to numerous economists who said that as we increasingly tie our regional gas market to the global gas market, it's likely to become more like crude oil, where global prices dominate, and we could be paying much more here, and no longer getting those cheap hometown discounts.

Susan Scott Peterson is an audio producer and writer whose journalism, radio and literary work have appeared with Vox Media, New Hampshire Public Radio, Allegheny Front, The Texas Observer and The Rumpus.