Working With CommunitiesIn 2024, we continued our partnership with the Pittsburgh Penguins as their official Net Zero Partner. Through this collaboration, EQT introduced the Penguins to Persefoni Advanced, a platform for measuring and managing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The Penguins team is now working with Persefoni to monitor their carbon footprint on an ongoing basis and, with EQT’s support, continuing to lower their emissions. This commitment is a key component of the broader Penguins Pledge to promote sustainable practices to preserve natural resources, while also supporting economic and social development. In 2024, EQT, together with the National Aviary, partnered with the Pittsburgh Penguins on an educational initiative. During the 2023–24 school year, EQT supported a program to bring Ambassador Birds to classrooms in rural Pennsylvania. This program was a tremendous success, teaching concepts in science, technology, engineering, math, geography, environmental literacy, sustainability, wildlife conservation, and more, all free of charge to schools. These environmental and conservation programs complement EQT’s ongoing sustainability initiatives and net-zero commitment.
Topic Highlights
We strive to be a good neighbor and corporate citizen by collaborating with, and giving back to, the communities where we live and operate.
- We generated approximately $4 billion of gross domestic product (GDP), and $776 million of indirect GDP through ancillary business activities.
- We spent over $3.3 billion with 2,270 suppliers. Of our total supplier spend, approximately 58% fell within our operational footprint while the remaining 42% went to suppliers outside our operating area.
- We supported approximately 20,764 ancillary jobs.
- We paid more than $665 million in royalties to local landowners.
- We invested nearly $70 million in local communities through philanthropic investments and infrastructure improvements.
Working With Communities
Operating responsibly in our local communities is critical to being the operator of choice for all stakeholders. We provide significant benefits to the communities where we operate, including direct and indirect job creation, landowner royalties, road improvements, and financial contributions.
Our ability to operate depends on maintaining positive, proactive relationships with our landowners. We build mutual trust through transparency, proactive engagement, and appropriate responsiveness to community and landowner concerns — from site selection through every phase of operation. We are committed to proactively addressing community concerns and other risks associated with local operations, and we follow all applicable federal, state, and local laws.
We also recognize that our operations can affect these communities due to traffic and road congestion, dust, and noise pollution, as well as potential accidents from operations that can occur on or near our sites. Our drilling and production operations have the most significant impact on our local communities. Drilling wells physically impacts the surrounding land while operating our wells introduces impacts to the environment, which are detailed in Environmental. As a result, we mitigate risk primarily through proper site assessments and active engagement with landowners and local communities for the duration of our operations.
Communities Where We Operate
| Western Pennsylvania | Northeast Pennsylvania | Southeast Ohio | Northern West Virgina |
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Mitigating Local Impacts
The size of a site dictates the amount of time needed to prepare and build a well, but construction takes a minimum of 180 days before drilling operations can begin. Before construction, our Surface, Permitting, and Civil (SP&C) department engages with landowners near a planned site to discuss its location. Our Community Relations Specialists and Environmental, Health, and Safety (EHS) personnel establish and maintain relationships with civic organizations, elected officials, emergency response personnel, business owners, residents, and other local stakeholders to understand their primary concerns. This team also obtains approval for construction following local ordinances through township hearing boards, which guide operational practices in the applicable community. We provide monthly updates to elected officials at the county, state, and township levels, which anyone can register to receive through our monthly newsletters.
Once a well is brought online and the gas flows, our Community Relations team remains in contact with the applicable municipality and civic organizations, and our Owner Relations team becomes the primary point of contact for impacted landowners. Access roads to sites can be near, or shared with, community neighborhoods, which can temporarily generate heavy traffic and operations near local residences — a regular safety concern in our local communities. When we design construction routes to sites, our teams carefully consider the locations of schools, recreation areas, and the local population. We curtail traffic on roads traveled by school buses, prohibit truck travel during school bus pick-up and drop-off, and place custom signs along our active truck routes to communicate these restrictions to our drivers and contractors. To make roads safer, we also widen roads, ensure the road base is suitable for heavy loads, build turnouts, and issue flaggers to help control traffic when necessary. To further mitigate our impact on local communities, we routinely complete road upgrades prior to starting operations, including roads at, and leading to, a site and we conduct proactive noise assessments. These efforts have led to a decrease in road issues, traffic, noise, complaints, and community disturbance.
Our community communications process provides information about upcoming operations and periodic updates from neighbors within a certain radius of construction. During the active operation of a site, we provide monthly updates to local townships and counties. Our Community Relations team actively engages with communities as needed and in alignment with local policies.
Addressing Complaints
We respond to and track community complaints and concerns reported via our Owner Relations hotline. Community members can easily contact our Owner Relations team members about any concerns they have through a dedicated email address, phone number, and submission form on our external website. We use a data-driven approach to resolve issues by completing assessments related to the concern (e.g., noise assessment) and collecting relevant data to find the best resolution. In 2024, we received 36,460 inquiries, with most questions about royalty payments or account updates. We fully resolved 99.7% of the inquiries received by our Owner Relations team during 2024 in the same calendar year.
Annually, we analyze our response results to identify trends in performance, benchmark against previous data, and determine any required procedural changes.
Emergency Preparedness and Disaster Response
The safety of the communities where we operate, and that of our employee and contractor workforce, is a top priority for us. Our emergency management efforts focus on prevention, preparedness, and response. Our Incident Management team, in conjunction with the EHS department, provides guidance and expertise in emergency response and crisis management. These functions also develop and maintain emergency notification procedures, training, and support. If an incident were to occur, EQT utilizes the National Incident Management System, including the Incident Command System (ICS), to manage emergency response.
Operating units develop site-specific emergency action and response plans to prepare for significant risks, and field teams lead daily tailgate safety meetings focused on hazard prevention and emergency preparedness before operations begin. Our Incident Management team also conducts annual emergency scenario drills, and we contract experts to facilitate these exercises. Additionally, we contract with operational specific experts to provide immediate support in areas such as well control, firefighting, and spill response as needed.
To address and proactively respond to community safety concerns, we work closely with emergency response personnel, public works employees, elected officials, school districts, and other key community members to engage them in the process, provide information, learn from them, and build relationships. Most often, these conversations focus on the following:
- Identification of the activity at a local job site;
- The types of equipment used;
- The most appropriate response for various scenarios; and
- Our emergency or crisis response plan.
We work together with local first responders to provide training and site tours so that all parties have the knowledge needed to respond in the unlikely event of an emergency at our sites. First responders use our “Oil and Gas 101” handbook, which includes photos and descriptions for each phase of operations. We provide employee training on incident response and command structure approximately every 6 months. During on-location training, we conduct mock incidents for our employees and first responders to resolve.
Landowner Relations
Landowner Engagement
We believe face-to-face interactions with landowners build trust and open channels for future dialogue. In 2024, we hosted an in-person town hall within our core operating areas, which was also livestreamed to allow attendance by a broader audience of landowners. This town hall provided our Landowner Relations team with the opportunity to provide operational updates and address concerns directly. During this event, we set up consultation stations to provide space for on-the-spot discussions between landowners and company personnel.
Promises Delivered
Rice Team promised to improve landowner relations and treat landowners as partners.
In late 2019, EQT began hosting landowner town halls, led by CEO Toby Rice, in its primary operating areas to engage landowners face-to-face.
In addition to creating opportunities for face-to-face interactions, correspondence is frequently used to communicate with landowners, allowing these critical stakeholders to stay informed and understand what to expect throughout the lifecycle of our operations in their area.
Tracking and Responding to Concerns
Landowners can contact EQT via a hotline number or a dedicated Owner Relations Portal. Both avenues provide landowners with an opportunity to easily voice concerns and ask questions. We promote the use of the hotline during in-person and virtual meetings, through email correspondence, on company business cards, and on our corporate website.
Our Owner Relations team manages all landowner requests and questions received via our secure online portal, telephone, or email by creating trackable cases in our digital work environment. Our formalized call center allows us to report more specific response time data. For entries made through our online portal, landowners select from a list of potential issues to automatically generate a corresponding tagged case in our digital work environment. The most frequent inquiry types include general royalty payment inquiries, account address changes, ownership changes, and direct deposit setup. For landowners who choose to contact us by phone, the caller can opt to leave a voicemail if all Owner Relations team members are on calls. The caller’s voicemail is automatically transcribed into a case in our digital work environment, which enables our Owner Relations agents to proactively follow up on concerns. We have also refined the data we collect for these cases to establish internal accountability and confirm that cases are routed appropriately. Our management team also reviews aggregate information on the inquiries we receive from landowners on a weekly basis.
The Community Relations team works alongside the Owner Relations team to respond to local concerns and regularly respond to issues raised by locally elected officials. The most frequent issues raised to the Community Relations team include road repair, area operations, and general constituent concerns. Upon notification, our Vice President, Land, reports any significant landowner concerns directly to our Chief Executive Officer. The Board of Directors (Board) receives relevant updates on landowner relations on a regular basis.
Our process results in stronger relationships with members of the communities where we operate and better tracking of landowner feedback. We continually work to better understand the types of feedback we receive and proactively address any significant issues identified through this process. We manage all landowner communications internally to promote more direct relationships. We measure our performance in management of landowner concerns based on how frequently we cycle cases compared to our acceptable open case count. We strive to resolve issues identified by a landowner within seven business days of the notification date.
Landowner Privacy
We must request certain personal information from landowners for legal and tax purposes. We strategically limit the number of employees who manage landowner data, and we work to protect landowner privacy by maintaining systems that manage incoming information and are designed to prevent breaches. All employees who oversee sensitive information are required to complete relevant training on properly safeguarding such information.
EQT is committed to our landowners, and we strive to operate with our values at the forefront of all that we do. For more information, visit our Land Resources webpage.
Supporting Local Economies
Economic Impact[1]
Our operations have a considerable influence on the local economies where we operate by supporting economic growth via job creation, tax revenue generation, and landowner royalty payments. Each year, we commission an independent analysis that tracks the indirect economic impacts of our business operations and examines how our operations contribute to the local and U.S. economies. A global sustainability consultancy firm conducted an economic impact analysis using our year-end 2024 data. According to the analysis, our direct activities produced approximately $1.5 billion of GDP in 2024, and the indirect GDP impact through our suppliers was $776 million. Our total induced impact — that is, the impact of spending by EQT employees, contractors, and suppliers — was approximately $1.8 billion.
Economic Impact on U.S. GDP (millions of dollars)[2]
Further, our activities generated $976 million in state and local tax revenues in 2024, supporting state and local governments.
2024 State and Local Tax Payments (millions of dollars)[3]
| Metric | Pennsylvania | West Virginia | Ohio | Rest of United States | Total |
| Property Taxes | $74.3 | $122.2 | $13.0 | $146.7 | $356.2 |
| Income Tax | $30.9 | $17.5 | $2.2 | $35.4 | $86.0 |
| Sales Tax | $90.2 | $61.0 | $7.9 | $111.4 | $270.4 |
| Other Personal Tax | $24.3 | $0.8 | $0.1 | $17.7 | $43.0 |
| Other Taxes and Production and Imports | $11.7 | $10.8 | $1.3 | $16.7 | $40.6 |
| Other | $33.7 | $65.6 | $6.5 | $74.1 | $179.9 |
| Total | $265.2 | $277.9 | $31.1 | $401.9 | $976.0 |
Through our operations, we paid more than $665 million in royalty payments to our landowners in 2024.
Royalties Paid (millions of dollars)
| Location[4] | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 |
| Pennsylvania | $1,113 | $449 | $280 |
| West Virginia | $209 | $103 | $152 |
| Ohio | $149 | $52 | $40 |
| All Other States | $413 | $191 | $194 |
| Total | $1,884 | $795 | $666 |
Based on our total direct, indirect, and induced impact, we provided $4 billion in value-added contributions to the U.S. GDP where:
- 95% of contributions occurred in three states where we primarily operate; and
- 5% of contributions related to out-of-state suppliers who provided goods and services for operational activities in our operating area.
Economic Impact on U.S. GDP by Geographic Location (millions of dollars)[5]
| Location | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 |
| Pennsylvania | $1,500 | $1,471 | $2,155 |
| West Virginia | $367 | $587 | $1,476 |
| Ohio | $112 | $75 | $184 |
| Rest of the United States | $1,201 | $924 | $192 |
| Total | $3,179 | $3,057 | $4,006 |
Local Labor and Supplier Impacts
Our operations, which are entirely in the United States, support local economies via taxes paid, road infrastructure improvements, local hiring of personnel and suppliers, and the use and support of local service establishments. In 2024, we spent over $3.3 billion with 2,270 suppliers. Of our total supplier spend, approximately 58% fell within our operational footprint while the remaining 42% went to suppliers outside our operating area.
We sustain local jobs for employees, contractors, and suppliers to support our daily operational activities. In addition to our direct employees, we supported approximately 20,764 ancillary jobs through our operations in 2024. This includes direct contractors — who make up most of our visible workforce — suppliers and supply chain employees who support our production, gathering, and transmission activities. Employment contributions also include the earnings spent by those employees, contractors, and suppliers — or the induced impact — which drives employment in sectors that provide various goods and services to the communities where EQT and our contractors and suppliers operate and live.
Estimated U.S. Labor Impacts (number of jobs)
Supplier Diversity
We embrace small and diverse local suppliers[7] as a means to deliver strong performance and quality to our customers and communities. Our team maintains dashboards in our digital work environment to track diverse service provider spending and identify opportunities to be inclusive in our outreach efforts. We consider supplier diversity as one aspect within our broader set of procurement standards and practices, which, taken together, inform a wide-reaching, competitive, and data-driven approach to awarding business. Our inclusive bidding processes help us work to increase small and diverse local supplier utilization in support of the communities where we operate.
Further, we encourage our vendors to consider engaging with local and diverse subcontractors as it provides us with additional opportunities to work with businesses that we may not otherwise have had the opportunity to engage. Our vendors are also instructed on reporting requirements for subcontracting with diverse and local suppliers, and we work with them to identify specific products needed or services that may align with small, local, or diverse providers of those same products. Our inclusive bidding process combined with our collaborative education and reporting processes contribute to our inclusive approach to supplier diversity.
In 2024, we spent just over $204 million, nearly 4% of our non-public company supplier spend, with diverse suppliers. We have awarded bids to diverse businesses in 286 supplier categories, which is more than double the number of supplier categories to which we awarded bids to diverse businesses in 2023.
Shareholder Impact
In addition to supporting local economies, our management team has made significant strides in improving the economic health of EQT since joining the company in 2019, which reflects a broader strategic shift toward operational efficiency, disciplined capital spending, and value creation. Our free cash flow,[8] which was negative in 2018, improved to nearly $700 million by the end of 2024, including a high-water mark of over $1.9 billion in 2022. This financial transformation has played a pivotal role in making EQT a more sustainable company — both economically and environmentally.
Our improved free cash flow performance stemmed from multiple initiatives, including streamlining operations, optimizing well productivity, leveraging advanced technologies, and executing strategic asset acquisitions and divestitures. These efforts not only reduced costs and enhanced revenue generation, but also provided the company with a stable and growing cash cushion. This stronger cash flow position has enabled EQT to reduce debt, increase shareholder returns, invest in new ventures and emissions reduction initiatives, and fund projects in communities where we operate. Overall, EQT’s improved free cash flow has positioned the company to be more resilient in volatile commodity markets, more responsive to environmental and regulatory expectations, and more capable of delivering sustainable value to stakeholders.
Free cash flow (millions of dollars)
[1] The 2024 economic impact calculations incorporate capital expenditures, payroll expenses, and taxes paid for the full calendar year for Equitrans.
[2] EQT’s economic impact is calculated using IMPLAN software. IMPLAN analyses are run using an underlying annual dataset that describes the state of the economy. Data for 2022 was not available in IMPLAN at the time when the analysis was conducted for 2022, thus 2021 IMPLAN data was used to calculate EQT’s economic impact for 2022.
[3] Calculated with IMPLAN software to estimate the total (direct and indirect) impact of EQT’s operations on state and local tax revenues. Amounts do not represent actual cash taxes paid by EQT.
[4] Royalties paid is based on the state of residence of the recipient of the royalty.
[5] EQT’s economic impact is calculated using IMPLAN software. IMPLAN analyses are run using an underlying annual dataset that describes the state of the economy. Data for 2022 was not available in IMPLAN at the time when the analysis was conducted for 2022, thus 2021 IMPLAN data was used to calculate EQT’s economic impact for 2022. Total may not equal sum of individual values due to rounding.
[6] As the economic impact analysis incorporated the full year of operations for the Equitrans assets, the 2024 employee number shown in this table is the sum of the Equitrans employees immediately prior to the close of the acquisition on July 22, 2024, and the total EQT employees on December 31, 2024. While there is some double counting of employees, the payroll expenses included in the analysis did not double count these costs for legacy Equitrans employees.
[7] We define diverse suppliers as business enterprises owned by historically underrepresented racial groups, women-owned business enterprises, and veteran-owned businesses.
[8] Free cash flow is a non-GAAP financial measure. See the Non-GAAP Disclosures for the definition of, and important information related to, this non-GAAP financial measure.
Giving Back to Our Communities
Our efforts to support the communities in which we operate include local giving, sponsorship, and philanthropic initiatives through EQT Corporation and the EQT Foundation, a separate 501(c)(3) organization. EQT Corporation and the EQT Foundation both make charitable contributions to organizations within the communities near our active operations. The EQT Foundation is currently evaluating programs funded by the Equitrans Foundation on a case-by-case basis, and we plan to merge the two entities in 2025.
Our Stakeholder Affairs team manages corporate donations to local communities, following a routine review and pre-approval process to understand each recipient organization’s initiatives and alignment with our values and corporate strategy. Our philanthropic investments support a variety of organizations that range from small, local nonprofits to municipalities that seek support for community projects that exceed their budgets. Other types of community engagement include sponsorships of county fairs, community festivals, unique partnerships, and other local events that enable our employees to engage with community members, enhance the quality of life for residents, and educate community members about our company and industry. The following are some examples of our 2024 corporate philanthropic efforts:
- Approximately $204,000 spent on livestock purchases at county fairs and festivals across our operating footprint, re-donating the livestock purchased or donating the proceeds to the local 4H;
- Partnered with Junior Achievement of Western Pennsylvania to create an EQT storefront in BizTown®, a simulated town run by students where community and business lessons learned in the classroom are applied to “real” work;
- Offered underwriting support to Switch Energy Alliance, bringing energy education into classrooms across the country; and
- Donated $220,000 to first responders across our operating areas to assist with day-to-day operations and larger initiatives where funds are needed.
Nonprofit organizations that qualify may also apply for grants through the EQT Foundation, which the EQT Foundation’s Board reviews to ensure compliance with U.S. laws and regulations applicable to corporate foundations. EQT Foundation grants complement our corporate support to build relationships throughout our operational footprint. The EQT Foundation prioritizes funds within the following four categories:
- Community Enrichment;
- Education and Workforce;
- Environment; and
- Nonprofit Capacity Support.
Nonprofit capacity support was a new focus area added in 2024, which invites nonprofits to apply for grant funding to tackle any existing barriers preventing them from moving to the next level of operational, programmatic, financial, or organization maturity. The EQT Foundation gave more than $6.1 million in 2024 to support local communities. Examples of grant recipients include the following:
| Ohio | Pennsylvania | West Virginia |
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In 2024, the EQT Foundation continued to match employee donations up to $75,000 per employee.[1] To simplify the employee giving and matching process, we launched the Fidelity Workplace Giving Platform, which allows our employees to make donations to nonprofits which are most important to them. The platform was launched in November 2024, prior to Giving Tuesday, a day on which the EQT Foundation increased its typical 100% match to a 200% match. More than $1.7 million in contributions were provided to nonprofits from employee donations and the EQT Foundation’s match. We are proud to have nearly doubled our Giving Tuesday contribution from 2023.
Our corporate philanthropic investments and road and infrastructure improvements for communities totaled nearly $70 million in 2024.
EQT Community Investments
| Metric | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 |
| Philanthropic Investments and Giving (EQT Corporation) | $1,093,492 | $1,305,336 | $1,718,009 |
| Roads and Infrastructure Investments (EQT Corporation) | $40,073,741 | $55,463,141 | $68,177,510 |
| Total Investments (EQT Corporation) | $41,167,233 | $56,768,477 | $69,895,519 |
| Total Grants and Contributions (EQT Foundation) | $3,807,625 | $4,260,600 | $6,154,423 |
In 2024, we continued our partnership with Pledge 1%, an initiative to encourage employees to pledge 1% of their time each year — approximately 20 hours — to volunteer in their local communities. Employees can participate in company-provided volunteer opportunities or identify opportunities on their own. We achieved our 1% goal in 2024[2] as our employees collectively volunteered 19,064 hours of their time.
[1] The EQT Foundation will match, in cash, on a dollar-for-dollar basis (up to $75,000 in the aggregate per employee for the year), certain donations to qualifying Internal Revenue Code Section 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organizations. All employees and directors of EQT Corporation and its subsidiaries are eligible. The minimum eligible donation is $100.
[2] Each year, we set our 1% pledge goal based on our employee headcount as of January 1 of the applicable year. For 2024, our 1% pledge goal was 18,000 volunteer hours.
