The Pittsburgh-based gas giant has been probed for well-site emissions and sued over water quality allegations this year. Now its aggressive expansion meets a fracking-friendly Washington.
Hometown gas giant EQT Corp. has spent millions of dollars in campaign contributions and lobbying, and has waged a public relations campaign aimed at framing methane gas from the Marcellus shale as “the biggest green initiative on the planet.” Climate scientists say that’s dangerously misleading and fueling climate denialism.
Some of the company’s neighbors have more immediate concerns.
Four families were severely sickened and forced to abandon their homes in Knob Fork, West Virginia, after EQT built a well pad next door, and after state agencies relied on the company to assess their complaints.
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In New Freeport, Pennsylvania, a hamlet in Greene County, residents say the company is responsible for contaminating their water after a 2022 fracking accident. EQT claims innocence, and a class action lawsuit is pending in federal court.
But in November, EQT won big in another arena. As Donald Trump was elected president and Dave McCormick claimed one of Pennsylvania’s seats in next year’s GOP-led Senate, EQT CEO Toby Rice’s vision moved ever closer to reality. He’s spent years consolidating power at EQT and billions of dollars to acquire the pipeline giant Equitrans and the gas producer Tug Hill, building what he says is a globally competitive fossil fuel firm primed “to compete and win in the global energy arena.”
In April, Rice joined other oil and gas executives at Trump’s Florida club, Mar-a-Lago, where the Republican asked for campaign contributions and promised to end regulations enacted under President Joe Biden. Trump has said he’ll immediately repeal Biden’s pause on liquefied natural gas [LNG] export permits, which are set to vastly expand under a Department of Energy likely to be unconcerned with climate consequences. Federal regulators, including the Environmental Protection Agency [EPA], could be gutted, and the agency’s offices of enforcement and environmental justice could be shuttered. As one former top agency official, Judith Enck, said, “This is the most serious moment in EPA history.”
In the series EQT’s Gas Play, PublicSource explored EQT’s role in shaping the global energy industry and its effect on health, climate and the environment.
EQT did not respond to PublicSource’s requests for comment for this story, nor any of the stories in this series. Based on public records and authoritative observers, here’s where things stand at an important moment for the company, the nation and the globe.
The feds investigate EQT in West Virginia and Pennsylvania
In Knob Fork, a cluster of homes in a rural valley along Mountaineer Highway, the EPA continues to investigate after four families reported illness and displacement when EQT expanded nearby operations in 2021.
PublicSource reporting in March identified potential problems with EQT’s pollution control equipment at the firm’s operations in the hollow. Volatile organic compound [VOC] emissions from the site were continuing to plague nearby families, which, over the course of three years, documented numerous health problems and unusually high levels of VOCs in their bodies and in the air, and reported those findings to state and federal regulators.
The EPA has taken notice. Following a 2023 inspection of EQT’s Sizemore well pad in Knob Fork, the agency opened a broader investigation, probing the firm’s operations throughout West Virginia and seeking information about EQT’s storage vessels, pollution control and VOC emissions data statewide. Internal emails reviewed by PublicSource suggest that investigation also extends into Pennsylvania.
At the center of the probe is the company’s pollution control equipment intended to combust emitted VOCs, including benzene, which is known to cause cancer and other serious health problems. The EPA has received monitoring data for EQT’s pollution control equipment, like the equipment found in Knob Fork, documents reviewed by PublicSource show.
PublicSource has continued to seek information regarding the EPA investigation into EQT.
Email records show that in July, the EPA was planning to release records to PublicSource detailing 2023 inspections at EQT facilities in West Virginia and 2024 inspections at the company’s locations in Pennsylvania.
Then, records show, EPA shared with EQT a copy of PublicSource’s Freedom of Information Act request. EQT objected to the release, saying the records included potentially confidential business information. The agency deferred to EQT’s request and has not released the requested records.
Last January, EPA investigators informed West Virginia regulators that the case was under review and they were deliberating on next steps. Nearly 12 months later, the EPA said that the investigation is still ongoing.
But with a change in federal leadership, it’s unclear how that investigation will be prioritized moving forward, or, as a former top administrator suggested, whether it will disappear entirely.
Greene County water problems unresolved in federal court
At the same time, investigations into reports of contaminated water in New Freeport, a rural hamlet in Greene County, continue after a 2022 fracking accident. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection is still working through nine unresolved complaints of tainted water. The agency last sampled water in New Freeport in May and continues to investigate EQT’s data, an agency spokesperson wrote in a statement.
A class action lawsuit filed by New Freeport-area households in June cites PublicSource reporting and asks a federal judge to order EQT to provide clean drinking water to residents after widespread reports of contaminated water. Residents reported burning rashes after showering and a discolored, chemical odor in their well water.
In filings with the state’s Environmental Hearing Board and in federal court, EQT has argued that the company’s operations did not impact the water in New Freeport, citing reports from four experts contracted by the company.
But video files, first published by PublicSource in June, cast doubt on the company’s public position.
One grainy video shows EQT workers conducting an injection test hours after the incident on June 19, 2022. In that test, when EQT ceased its fracking operations, the fluid spurting from the ground near Main Street in New Freeport immediately stopped, too. When the fracking resumed, so did the gas and fluid roaring from the ground, drowning out the chirping birds.
“They just started it up a minute ago,” the worker recording the video says. “It’s blowing gas out like crazy!” The weeds surrounding the hole blow in the gusts and the workers note that fluid had begun to erupt, too. “That’s a direct correlation in my book,” one says.
A separate video shows fluid spurting from the ground that day.
Recent court filings show some conclusions drawn from available data.
Josh Hickman, a geologist retained by the plaintiffs, authored a report arguing “with reasonable certainty” that the water in New Freeport was contaminated by EQT’s fracking operations.
“The contamination is continuing and potentially increasing due to the ongoing connection of the water aquifers with the Marcellus Shale,” Hickman wrote in a report filed Nov. 14.
Hickman, who worked as a geologist with Cabot Oil and Gas when the company caused devastating water contamination in Dimock, Pennsylvania, analyzed EQT’s sampling data.
The company data, according to his report, shows the presence of surfactants (“a key component in fracking fluids”) in local water sources immediately after the June 2022 incident, reflecting a tenfold increase since the company’s pre-drill testing in 2020. Hydrocarbons — including methane and ethane — also increased, according to testing by John Stolz of Duquesne University, whose data Hickman analyzed.
“The presence of surfactants, hydrocarbons (methane, ethane and butane), along with the reports from the residents indicate an unsafe environment,” Hickman concluded, adding that the contamination is ongoing and is continually aggravated by EQT’s operations in the area.
In the company’s most recent filing, EQT asked the judge to dismiss the complaint, arguing that the plaintiffs have failed to state a claim and that the statute of limitations for a majority of the counts expired by one day.
“All of the attorneys and all the experts, to me, cannot negate that something happened there,” said Sarah Martik, executive director of the Center for Coalfield Justice, an advocacy group supporting residents of New Freeport. “Nothing was wrong before the frack out, and so much is wrong after.”
In New Freeport, residents must wait for the judge to issue an order on the request for an injunction to provide water, which is pending.
A change in power
Trump’s campaign trail mantra, “Drill, Baby, Drill,” and his unfettered approach to LNG exports promises to be a boon to fossil fuel executives like Rice. The president-elect also promised to “kill” EPA regulation of carbon pollution.
During Trump’s first term, EPA enforcement of environmental laws fell off, accelerating a 20-year decline caused by budget and staffing cuts, according to a recent analysis by the Environmental Integrity Project. The analysis found that, compared to Obama’s second term, the average number of EPA inspections and penalties to polluters each dropped by about a third. Total injunctive relief, including cleanup projects and installation of pollution controls, fell by more than half and the number of polluters charged in criminal cases each year on average dropped about 40%.
Despite falling statistics, the EPA continues to “make great strides” in ensuring compliance with environmental laws like the Clean Air Act, wrote Adam Ortiz, current EPA Mid-Atlantic Regional Administrator, in a statement. The region settled 11 Clean Air Act enforcement cases and conducted 89 compliance inspections, including 23 of oil and gas well pads, he wrote.
“Going forward, we’ll continue to use all available regulatory and enforcement powers to ensure vulnerable people and communities have the clean air that they deserve,” Ortiz wrote.
Trump’s pick to head the EPA, Lee Zeldin, will operate under a mandate to “ensure fair and swift deregulatory decisions that will be enacted in a way to unleash the power of American businesses,” Trump has said. And under Project 2025, the conservative blueprint for Trump’s presidency pushed by the Heritage Foundation, the agency could face an unprecedented gutting.
Project 2025 includes calls to strip EPA’s authority to set health-based air quality standards under the Clean Air Act and calls for the elimination of the agency’s Office of Environmental Justice and Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance, which has handled the agency’s investigation into EQT.
One former top EPA official said the agency’s ability to enforce pollution control laws is likely to be slashed under Trump, and ongoing investigations, like that into EQT, could be abandoned completely.
“There is a real risk that ongoing investigations will either come to a screeching halt or will result in settlement discussions that just provide a slap on the wrist to polluters,” said Judith Enck, a former EPA regional administrator under the Obama administration, in a recent interview.
EPA regional administrators are political appointees. Trump’s pick for Region 3 administrator will be responsible for the agency’s operations in the heart of EQT’s territory.
“It’s going to be worse this time,” Enck said.
This story was fact-checked by Matt Maielli.
