Environmental

Spills
and Leaks

Our EHS team reports to our Vice President, EHS and oversees our compliance, spill prevention, and response activities. A member of our EHS team and two backup individuals are always available to receive calls in the event of a spill. Our Vice President, EHS reports information on any significant spills or leaks to the Public Policy and Corporate Responsibility (PPCR) Committee of the Board of Directors and our Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Committee. For more efficient and rapid small-spill response, spills of less than 3 gallons are routed from our emergency call center directly to our third-party remediation business partner, enabling our EHS team to focus on responding to larger, more impactful spills or leaks, should one occur.

To reduce the likelihood and impact of significant spills or leaks, we maintain Spill Prevention, Control, and Countermeasure plans, or Preparedness, Prevention, and Contingency plans, for every worksite that stores fluid. These comprehensive plans, based on regulations established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PADEP), guide our employees and contractors to minimize the chance for a release and dictate the actions required should a spill or leak occur. The plans define training programs, inspection protocols, secondary containment monitoring, and repair programs required at each natural gas well and compressor station.

We deploy targeted strategies at each stage of our operations to prevent spills and leaks, for example:

• We implement measures to monitor the risk of a spill or leak and to detect potential equipment failures, including installation of pressure sensors and onsite inspections.
• Our third-party inspectors look for and identify open or closed pad drains during operations and create a corrective action when applicable.

We closely monitor equipment performance, carefully manage wastewater from our operations, and host routine meetings with water haulers to prevent spills from our water system. For more information, please see Water.

Additionally, we hold our employees and contractors to ambitious standards for spill and leak prevention and we continuously work to improve the training we provide. We require all our business partners to complete spill-specific training through our contractor management portal, in addition to our annual EHS training required by all personnel. Our spill-specific training covers methods to prevent, identify, contain, report, and safely control any releases encountered on EQT property. For additional details about our EHS program, please see Workforce Health and Safety.

When a spill or leak is reported, we request photos and videos to immediately determine the magnitude of the spill, so that our Remediation team can promptly investigate the incident and determine an appropriate response. We strive to achieve a 2-hour response time from our professional remediation company, regardless of the spill size. The Local Government and Community Affairs team is notified of every spill over 5 gallons. The team uses experience from training and input from the EHS team to determine the potential environmental and community impacts and associated procedure for stakeholder notification.

We use appropriate cleanup techniques to mitigate the spill’s impacts, including removal of effluents from soil. We promptly remove and dispose of cleanup materials according to applicable federal, state, and local regulatory requirements to minimize the impact on the environment and local community. We then evaluate the cause of the spill or leak to identify and implement corrective action. We integrate improved techniques and protocols into design standards, operations, and future spill prevention plans to prevent repeat accidents. We share these with employees and contractors to continuously improve our operations. Additionally, we host frequent business partner meetings to discuss their spill and leak performance and make recommendations for improvement.

Our emergency response and preparedness program requires the following actions in the event of an incident:

• Determine the source and type of spill and begin corrective action;
• Evacuate any employees who require medical attention;
• Isolate the area and stop the spill as soon as possible with appropriate methods;
• Contain the spill with available resources — including containment ditches, diking, and spill kits complete with absorbent booms, pads, pillows, and personal protective equipment (we do not use chemical dispersants);
• Report the spill through our Emergency Hotline, which notifies the relevant EHS Coordinator to determine appropriate remediation actions; and
• Perform, or observe, proper cleanup measures as directed by the EHS Coordinator.

We continue to update and refine our ICS to meet stakeholder expectations and industry best practices. In 2023, we conducted two drills that involved use of our ICS to respond to incidents and spills simultaneously. The drills allowed employees to practice using our ICS and determined where fail spots may arise in the case of an actual incident.

Our EHS team meets weekly with our Production Engineering team to review and identify top indicators for potential spills from the prior week. For each incident, we have a Significant Incident Review meeting to discuss what happened, why it happened, and how we plan to prevent a similar future occurrence. Additionally, we hire professional service contractors to manage all spills and leaks associated with our operations. We host frequent meetings with contractors to better understand the incident and discuss our expectations and share findings with other operations and business partners to prevent future occurrences.

Within our digital work environment, we generate dedicated spill and leak reports to notify appropriate personnel of a spill. We provide spill and leak reports to our professional remediation contractors to centralize status updates and appropriate documentation. This allows us to more cohesively track and report spills. This centralized system allows multiple departments, operational groups, support groups, and business partners to be informed from the time an incident is first reported through corrective action and closure.