EQT

Environmental

Spills and Leaks

PROMISES MADE
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Topic Highlights

Hydrocarbon spills and leaks pose risks to human health, ecosystem health, and our business. We take our approach to preventing and managing spills and leaks seriously, seeking to meet or exceed all local, state, and federal policy requirements. If a spill or leak does occur, we aim to respond effectively and promptly.

  • We formally established a company-wide Incident Management Team that received general Incident Command System (ICS) training and role-specific training for individuals in the command staff.
  • We conducted four drills that involved our ICS to respond to incidents and spills simultaneously. The drills allowed employees to practice using the ICS and determined where fail spots may arise in the case of an actual incident.
  • We performed more than 3,500 proactive inspections and identified over 3,000 corrective actions.

What We Are Doing

GRI 3-3
Management of material topic
GRI 3-3

Spills and leaks can hurt our landowner partners and lead to ecological damage, environmental fines, remediation costs, operational delays, and reputational risk. We work diligently to avoid spills and leaks and mitigate the potential impacts on human and environmental health when a spill or leak occurs. Our approach to prevent and manage spills and leaks aims to meet or exceed all local, state, and federal policies. If a spill or leak does occur, we aim to respond in an effective and timely manner. We outline all expectations related to spills and leaks to our employees and business partners as part of our Environmental, Health, and Safety (EHS) Management System and in our EHS Handbook.

Governance

Our EHS team reports to our Vice President, EHS, overseeing our compliance, spill prevention, and response activities. A member of our EHS team and two backup individuals are always available to receive calls in case of a spill. Our Vice President, EHS reports information on anysignificant spills or leaks to the Public Policy and Corporate Responsibility (PPCR) Committee of the Board of Directors (Board) and our Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Committee.

Spill and Leak Prevention

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 (EPA) and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PADEP), guide our employees and contractors to minimize the chance of 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; and
  • Our third-party inspectors look for and identify open or closed pad drains during operations and implement 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.

Spill and Leak Response

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.

Spills of less than 3 gallons route directly from our emergency call center 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. The Community Relations 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. In addition to traditional training, during 2024, we conducted a demonstration test where we notified state regulators and tested a 5-gallon spill of distilled water at one of our pads to understand the potential area that could be affected. We plan to use this demonstration test to help estimate quantities for spill incidents that may occur in the future.

We use appropriate cleanup techniques to mitigate a 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 2024, we conducted four 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. As part of this review, we categorize the spills as preventable or non-preventable to allow us to focus on future prevention of spills within our control. Additionally, we hire professional service contractors to manage all spills and leaks associated with our operations. We host frequent meetings with contractors to understand the incident better 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 documentation. This allows us to track and report spills more cohesively. This centralized system informs multiple departments, operational groups, support groups, and business partners from the time an incident is first reported through corrective action and closure. We also enhanced our spill reporting process in 2024, allowing us to track more detailed information about the type of material spilled and spill indicators.


How We Are Doing

GRI 3-3
Management of material topic
SASB EM-EP-160a.2
(1) Number and (2) aggregate volume of hydrocarbon spills, (3) volume in Arctic, (4) volume impacting shorelines with ESI rankings 8-10, and (5) volume recovered
SASB EM-MD-160a.4
(1) Number and (2) aggregate volume of hydrocarbon spills, (3) volume in Arctic, (4) volume in sites with high biodiversity significance, and (5) volume recovered
GRI 3-3
SASB EM-EP-160a.2
SASB EM-MD-160a.4

We actively work to improve our process for managing spills and leaks. Members of our EHS team periodically perform proactive environmental inspections on all our sites. Our EHS team performed more than 3,500 proactive inspections in 2024 and identified more than 3,000 corrective actions based on these inspections. We distribute our hotline number to report spills and leaks among our employees and contractors, and we strongly emphasize the importance of reporting spills, regardless of size or quantity. We also host a quarterly roundtable with other operators in Appalachia to discuss a broad set of topics, including spill and leak performance. For more information, see Workforce Health and Safety.

The table below includes details about reportable spills. We do not operate in the Arctic and, therefore, we had no spills that impacted the Arctic or shorelines with Environmentally Sensitive Index rankings 8 to 10.[1]

Reportable Spills Resulting in a Release[2]

  Metric

2022

2023

2024

#

Volume (BOE)

#

Volume (BOE)

#

Volume (BOE)

Hydrocarbon releases >1 BBL (1 BOE)

0

0

1

1

2

4

Non-hydrocarbon releases >1 BBL (1 BOE)

27

311

36

797

30

859

Total spills resulting in a release >1 BBL (1 BOE)

27

311

37

798

32

863

Hydrocarbon releases >5 gallons and <1 BBL

9

2

11

2

14

4

Non-hydrocarbon releases >5 gallons and <1 BBL

56

765

46

14

45

12

Total spills resulting in a release >5 gallons

92

1,078

94

814

91

879

BBL: barrel of oil; BOE: barrel of oil equivalent

[1] The scope of spills to environmentally sensitive shorelines include spills to water that reached the soil or spills directly to the soil of shorelines with Environmentally Sensitive Index levels 8 through 10, where levels are defined according to U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s shoreline sensitivity rankings list.

[2] Includes only reportable spills and volumes outside containment. Our threshold for disclosure of spills is 5 gallons due to the fact that applicable state Departments of Environmental Protection do not require spills under 5 gallons to be reported.

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