In 2024 @publicsource.org reporter @quinnglabicki.bsky.social drilled into EQT's operations in rural PA and WV, explored the company's climate claims and profiled its CEO in "EQT's Gas Play" www.publicsource.org/eqt-gas-play/

This is the latest in our series EQT’s Gas Play. The project is supported by @pulitzercenter. Many thanks to the great editors and fact checkers and colleagues who made this possible.

www.publicsource.org/eqt-gas-play/

For people in places like Western Pennsylvania and West Virginia, unleashed LNG exports could upset the equation that has long included airborne emissions and water contamination on one side, and cheap, homegrown energy on the other.

If the GOP embrace of Trump’s campaign trail mantra: “Drill, baby drill!” translates into a profitable win for Rice, it might not be one for American consumers.

There is mounting concern that Rice’s vision of “unleashed” LNG would mean for American energy bills.

“What he’s typically not going to be emphasizing — unless he’s talking just to his investors — is [that] by promoting LNG exports and gas expansion, ‘I am going to get filthy, stinking rich,’” Slocum said.

Rice has cast LNG as a global savior: a geopolitical wedge countering Putin’s aggression and the influence of “petro-dictators” on the world stage, lifting people who “use wood and dung as a primary source of energy” from energy poverty, and addressing climate change by replacing coal abroad.

Since 2021, EQT has spent more than $2.6 million lobbying Congress and federal government branches to support LNG interests, lobbying reports show.

He’s invested his own cash to build influence in D.C.

Last year through August, Rice personally donated nearly $238,000 to federal campaigns or political action committees, including $56,200 in support of Dave McCormick in the PA senate.

“He is evangelical about natural gas,” said Tyson Slocum, director of the energy program at Public Citizen, a D.C. corporate accountability group.

“He ascribes almost supernatural powers to natural gas. I’m waiting for him to say that it can ward off COVID and evil spirits.”