ESG REPORTWhy It Matters to Us
Operating responsibly in our local communities is critical to being the operator of choice for all stakeholders. We provide significant benefits to the communities in which we operate, including direct and indirect job creation, landowner royalties, road improvements, and financial contributions. We also recognize, however, that our operations can impact the communities in which we operate 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. As a result, we focus on the areas surrounding our direct operations and proactively engage with local communities to further mitigate our impact.
Our efforts to positively impact our local communities focus on mitigating potential negative impacts of our business and maximizing the benefits of our operations by providing sustainable benefits to local economies and philanthropic support. We mitigate potential negative impacts primarily through proper site assessments and active engagement with landowners and local communities for the duration of our operations. We strive to be a good neighbor and corporate citizen by working collaboratively with, and giving back to, the communities in which we live and operate. Additionally, our ability to operate is dependent upon maintaining positive, proactive relationships with our landowners. During every step of the process, our goal is to create mutual trust through transparency, proactive engagement, and appropriate responsiveness to community and landowner concerns.
Our approach includes the following actions:
- Working with Communities: how we mitigate local impacts, address concerns, and promote public safety;
- Maintaining Positive Landowner Relations: how we partner with local landowners to address their concerns and maintain their privacy;
- Supporting Local Economies: our impacts through job creation, tax revenue generation, and royalty payments; and
- Giving Back to Our Communities: our charitable contributions in the areas where we operate.
Working with Communities
We are committed to proactively addressing community concerns and other risks associated with local operations throughout all phases of our operations. We follow all applicable laws at the township, county, and state levels and aim to address community concerns before we begin site construction.
Our drilling and production operations have the most significant impact on local communities. Drilling wells introduces physical impacts to the surrounding land while operating our wells introduces impacts to the environment, which are detailed in Environmental. Additionally, our operations have a significant economic impact on local communities via royalties paid, increased job opportunities, and dollars spent with local suppliers, to name a few examples.
Communities Where We Operate
| Southwest Pennsylvania | Northeast Pennsylvania | Southeast Ohio | Northern West Virginia |
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Mitigating Local Impacts
The size of a site dictates the amount of time required to prepare and build the site, but construction takes a minimum of 120 days before drilling operations can commence. Prior to construction, our Land department engages with landowners near a planned site to discuss its location. Our Local Government and Community Affairs Specialists are responsible for establishing and maintaining relationships with civic organizations, elected officials, emergency response personnel, business owners, residents, and other local stakeholders. These specialists work to understand and address our stakeholders’ primary concerns. This team obtains approval for construction in accordance with 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 and anyone wishing to be added to our updates can easily sign up to receive our monthly newsletters.
Access to sites can be located near, or shared with, community neighborhoods and can lead to temporary heavy traffic and operations near local residences — a regular safety concern in our local communities. When designing construction routes to sites, we carefully consider the locations of schools, recreation areas, and the local population. We curtail traffic on roads traveled by school buses, prohibiting 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. These signs also alert the community to slow down and watch for children. 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 commencing 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, subsequent complaints, and community disturbance. We also implemented a communications process to provide information about upcoming operations and a means of receiving 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 Local Government and Community Affairs team actively communicates with communities as needed and in alignment with local policies. In 2022, after a two-year hiatus, we returned to in-person town hall meetings in the communities where we operate. In 2022, we hosted five separate community town halls in Greene County, Pennsylvania; Washington County, Pennsylvania; Belmont County, Ohio; Wetzel County, West Virginia; and Lycoming County, Pennsylvania. Once a well is brought online and the gas is flowing, our Local Government and Community Affairs 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.
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 may 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 determine the best resolution. In 2022, we received 28,611 inquiries, with most questions concerning royalties or other payments. We fully resolved 100% of the inquiries received by our Owner Relations team 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 Crisis Management team, in conjunction with the Environmental, Health, and Safety (EHS) department, provides guidance and expertise in emergency response and crisis management. These functions also develop and maintain emergency notification procedures, training, and support.
Operating units develop site-specific emergency action and response plans to prepare for significant risks, and teams in the field lead a daily tailgate safety meeting focused on hazard prevention and emergency preparedness before operations begin. Our Crisis Management team also conducts annual emergency scenario drills, and we contract with experts to provide immediate support in areas such as well control, firefighting, and spill response as needed. In 2022, we conducted a company-wide emergency scenario exercise at one of our well pads. To maintain the integrity of the exercise, only three employees at EQT were made aware of the exercise prior to the exercise incident. Local first responders were contracted to run the exercise as if it were a true emergency. After the exercise, we were able to evaluate our team’s response and discuss lessons learned.
To address and proactively respond to community safety concerns, we regularly communicate with our communities and 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 occurring at a local job site;
- The types of equipment being used;
- The most appropriate response for various scenarios; and
- Our emergency or crisis response plan.
In addition, 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 utilize 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 six months. During on-location training, we conduct mock incidents for our employees and first responders to resolve. We also participate in the Southwest Pennsylvania Oil & Gas Emergency Management Alliance — a coalition of producers, supply companies, and first responders dedicated to promoting safety in the upstream industry. The group is managed by Washington County Emergency Management Services.
Road Safety
Vehicle safety is included in both our employee and contractor safety expectations, and our EHS Program explicitly addresses safe vehicle operation. We distribute a Traffic Control Plan for all active sites to employees, contractors, and subcontractors. These plans outline speed limits, curfews, and route restrictions. We also track all employees and contractors coming on or off our sites to promote safety. We require all workers coming onto a location to watch a safety video and pass a test created by our EHS department. Individuals are then issued a safety badge containing their name, company, and vehicle information, which is used to track arrivals and departures from the site. This system also enhances our emergency response readiness as it provides us with real-time information regarding on‑location workers, enabling us to provide an accurate head count to first responders should an incident occur.
All our work vehicles have a Geotab global positioning system (GPS) vehicle tracking device that we use to track driving behaviors to encourage drivers to comply with applicable guidelines. These GPS devices allow us to monitor vehicle location more easily, enabling us to determine who was involved if we receive a community complaint or an accident occurs. Additionally, we hire private road monitors with law enforcement backgrounds to continuously surveil our truck traffic once operations begin. These monitors are also involved in investigating community complaints regarding employee or contractor violations.
Read more about employee and contractor safety in Workforce Health and Safety.
Landowner Relations
Landowner Engagement
We believe face-to-face interactions with landowners build trust and open channels for future dialogue. Our in-person town halls, which we resumed in 2022, provided our Landowner Relations team the opportunity to address landowner concerns directly. We set up stations throughout the events, providing space for on-the-spot consultation.
In addition to creating opportunities for face-to-face interactions, we send frequent correspondence to landowners designed to keep these critical stakeholders informed and help them understand what to expect throughout the lifecycle of our operations in their area. We also send targeted correspondence to select landowners to provide updates on relevant projects.
Tracking and Responding to Concerns
Landowners can contact EQT through several avenues. We maintain a hotline number and a dedicated webpage to provide landowners 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 are provided a list of potential issues to choose from to automatically generate a corresponding tagged case in our digital work environment. The most frequent inquiry types we receive 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 process results in stronger relationships with members of the local communities where we operate and better tracking of landowner feedback. Through this system, we can track the thousands of questions and comments we receive each year and evaluate the speed by which we respond to the landowner and resolve each matter.
Landowner matters are communicated to our Vice President, Land, who reports directly to our Chief Executive Officer. Relevant topics on landowner relations are communicated to the Board of Directors on a regular basis. Our management team also reviews aggregate information on the types and volumes of inquiries we receive from landowners on a weekly basis.
We continually work to better understand the types of feedback we receive from landowners 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 managing landowner concerns based on how frequently we cycle cases compared to our acceptable open case count. We strive to resolve any 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 work to protect landowner privacy by maintaining systems that manage incoming information and are designed to prevent breaches. We strategically limit the number of employees who manage landowner data, and all employees who oversee sensitive information are required to complete relevant training.
Supporting Local Economies
Economic Impact
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 2022 data. According to the analysis, our direct activities produced approximately $776 million of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2022 and the indirect GDP impact through our suppliers was $505 million. Our induced impact — that is, the impact of spending by our employees, contractors, and suppliers — was approximately $1,898 million in 2022. Further, our activities generated nearly $600 million in state and local tax revenues in 2022, supporting state and local governments.
Economic Impact on U.S. GDP (millions of dollars)[1]
2022 State and Local Tax Payments (millions of dollars)[2]
|
Pennsylvania |
West Virginia |
Ohio |
Rest of the United States |
Total |
|
|
Property Taxes |
$51.0 |
$18.1 |
$8.3 |
$49.6 |
$127.0 |
|
Income Tax |
$33.3 |
$4.1 |
$1.3 |
$24.8 |
$63.5 |
|
Sales Tax |
$59.1 |
$13.2 |
$4.9 |
$49.5 |
$126.7 |
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Other Personal Tax |
$0.8 |
$0.2 |
$0.0 |
$0.7 |
$1.7 |
|
Other Taxes on Production and Imports |
$10.8 |
$2.9 |
$0.5 |
$9.1 |
$23.3 |
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Other |
$59.8 |
$88.9 |
$8.3 |
$100.6 |
$257.6 |
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Total |
$214.8 |
$127.4 |
$23.3 |
$234.3 |
$599.8 |
Through our operations, we paid over $1.8 billion in royalty payments to our landowners in 2022, over double the amount paid in 2021.
Royalties Paid (millions of dollars)
|
State[3] |
2020 |
2021 |
2022 |
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Pennsylvania |
$165 |
$416 |
$1,113 |
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West Virginia |
$10 |
$86 |
$209 |
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Ohio |
$38 |
$79 |
$149 |
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All other states |
$142 |
$150 |
$413 |
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Total |
$355 |
$731 |
$1,884 |
Our annual independent analysis also measures the economic impact of our business operations on the U.S. economy by geographic location. According to this analysis, we provided nearly $3.2 billion in value-added contributions to the U.S. GDP in 2022 where:
- 62% of contributions occurred in three states where we operate; and
- 38% of contributions were related to out-of-state suppliers who provided goods and services for operational activities in our operating areas.
Economic Impact on U.S. GDP by Geographic Location (millions of dollars)[4]
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EQT GDP Contributions (millions of dollars) |
2020 |
2021 |
2022 |
|
Pennsylvania |
$1,050 |
$1,034 |
$1,500 |
|
West Virginia |
$86 |
$265 |
$367 |
|
Ohio |
$143 |
$98 |
$112 |
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Rest of the United States |
$576 |
$770 |
$1,200 |
|
Total |
$1,855 |
$2,167 |
$3,179 |
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. We sustain local jobs for employees, contractors, and suppliers to support our daily operational activities. In addition to our direct employees, we supported over 21,500 ancillary jobs through our operations in 2022. Ancillary jobs include direct contractors, who make up most of our visible workforce, and suppliers and supply chain employees who support our production, gathering, and transmission activities. Employment contributions also include earnings spent by those employees, contractors, and suppliers (or the induced impact), which drives employment in sectors providing various goods and services to the communities where our workforce, contractors, and suppliers operate and live. Our operations also look for opportunities within supplier relations to support local economies. During 2022, 60% of our total supplier spend was directed to suppliers headquartered within the Appalachian Basin.
Estimated U.S. Labor Impacts (number of jobs)
Supplier Diversity
We seek out small and diverse local suppliers whenever possible to deliver strong performance to our customers and communities through a sourcing approach supported by our Board of Directors and management team. We define diverse suppliers as business enterprises owned by historically underrepresented racial groups, women-owned business enterprises, and veteran-owned businesses. Further, we encourage our top vendors to consider diverse subcontractors as it helps these businesses develop relevant experience and provides us with additional opportunities to work with diverse businesses that we may not otherwise have had the opportunity to engage. We maintain dashboards in our digital work environment to track diverse service provider spend. We use these dashboards to identify targeted outreach opportunities. We integrate supplier diversity goals within our standard procurement practices to inform a broader-reaching, competitive, and data-driven approach to awarding business. We continue to expand our diverse supplier universe through targeting diverse suppliers in our bidding processes and setting goals for increasing diverse supplier utilization. Our targeted procurement initiatives include the following:
- Encouraging top suppliers to seek out and include diverse businesses in their bids and as part of their proposed scope of work;
- Giving greater consideration to vendors who identify how they will utilize diverse sub-vendors;
- Conducting meetings with our top contractors to provide supplier diversity education, outline reporting requirements for subcontracting with diverse suppliers, and identify specific products purchased by the top contractors to help align them with diverse firms selling those products; and
- Requesting that our top contractors provide their monthly spend with diverse subcontractors and local suppliers.
In 2022, we spent just over $116 million, or approximately 11% of our non-public company supplier spend, with diverse suppliers. We have awarded bids to diverse businesses in 113 supplier categories, an increase of 95% compared to 2020 (when we first started tracking this metric), nearly doubling the opportunities for EQT to work with diverse service providers.
[1] 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.
[2] Calculated using 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.
[3] Royalties paid is based on the state of residence of the recipient of the royalty.
[4] 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.
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 (Foundation), a separate 501(c)(3) organization. EQT Corporation and the Foundation both focus on making charitable contributions to organizations within the communities near our active operations.
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 to determine if they are consistent with our values and corporate strategy. Our philanthropic investments support a variety of organizations ranging from small, local nonprofits to municipalities seeking additional support for community projects that exceed their budgets. Other types of corporate support include sponsorships of county fairs, community festivals, and other local events that enable us to bond with our neighbors, enhance the quality of life for residents, and educate community members about our company and industry. Our goal is to provide an opportunity for community members to engage with our employees. The following are some examples of our 2022 corporate philanthropic efforts:
- Spent more than $160,000 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.
- Awarded $220,000 to local volunteer fire departments through the EQT First Responder Giving Program.
- Donated $30,000 to the Monongahela Police Department for the purchase of new body cameras.
- Donated more than $40,000 to schools and community agencies on Giving Tuesday 2022 to help fund holiday gift giving and food pantry programs.
Qualifying nonprofit organizations may also apply for grants through the Foundation, which are reviewed by the Foundation’s Board of Directors to ensure compliance with U.S. laws and regulations applicable to corporate foundations. Foundation grants complement our corporate support to build relationships throughout our operational footprint. The Foundation prioritizes funding within the following three categories:
- Community Enrichment;
- Education and Workforce; and
- Environment.
The Foundation gave more than $3.8 million in 2022 to support local communities. Examples of grant recipients include the following:
- Allegheny County Parks Foundation – Round Hill Park visitors center rain garden
- Allegheny Land Trust – Sustainability Starts at Home education program
- Donora Public Library – Makerspace equipment
- Dress for Success Pittsburgh – mobile services to women in Fayette, Greene, and Washington Counties
- Fayette County Cultural Trust – Rural Arts Collaborative in Greene County schools
- Foundation for Free Enterprise Education – Pennsylvania Free Enterprise Week and Speaker Series
- Generation West Virginia – Career Connector
- Hunters Sharing the Harvest – Venison processing
- Lackawanna College – Amatrol process teaching workstations
- Lemoyne Community Center – Homework & More Program
- Marianna Community Public Library – Children’s room updates
- Marietta College – Mobile environmental education lab
- Mountaineer Food Bank – Mobile Pantry Program
- Pittsburgh Botanic Garden – Autumn in the Garden
- Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra – Paul J. Ross Fellowship
- Pittsburgh Three Rivers Marathon – Three-year underwriting of EQT Pittsburgh 10 Miler
- Project Lead the Way – K–12 engineering curriculum for public schools
- Real World Scholars – EdCorps entrepreneurship program in rural communities
- The Pittsburgh Promise – Coaching and mentorship programs
- Tyler County Family Resource Network – Back to School Fair
- University of Pittsburgh – Summer Cyber Security camp for teens
- Utica Shale Academy – Individualized workforce training and equipment updates
- Waynesburg University – Summer STEAM programs, Achievement Academy, and entrepreneurial education programs
- West Virginia University Extension Services – Marshall County STEM projects and school pop-up markets
- West Virginia Women Work – Step Up for Women Construction Pre-Apprenticeship Program
- Western Pennsylvania Conservancy – Greenlick Run Dam removal project and Waynesburg Community Garden
- Wetzel County Center for Children and Families – Hygiene kits for students
Our corporate philanthropic investments and road and infrastructure improvements for communities totaled more than $40 million in 2022.
EQT Community Investments
|
|
2020 |
2021 |
2022 |
|
Philanthropic investments and giving (EQT Corporation) |
$518,000 |
$865,900 |
$1,093,492 |
|
Roads and infrastructure improvements (EQT Corporation) |
$27,600,000 |
$27,585,234 |
$40,073,741 |
|
Total Investments (EQT Corporation) |
$28,118,000 |
$28,451,134 |
$41,167,233 |
|
Total Grants and Contributions (EQT Foundation) |
$3,662,864 |
$3,052,508 |
$3,807,625 |
In 2022 we continued our partnership with Pledge 1%, an initiative to encourage employees to pledge 1% of their time each year — approximately 20 hours — to volunteering in the communities in which they live and work. Employees can participate in company-provided volunteer opportunities or identify opportunities on their own. We encourage our employees to donate their unique set of skills to those in need in the community. We achieved our 1% volunteer goal in 2022, with our employees donating 14,327 hours of their time to volunteering in 2022, over double the number of hours donated in 2021.
Additionally, around the holiday season, EQT employees hosted hygiene drives to collect essential items that are normally not covered under food security programs for those in need. Employees donated diapers, shampoo, soap, laundry detergent, and other household items that were then distributed to agencies across the company's footprint
“Our Qrew members are extremely generous with their time and their resources and consistently show up for our communities. Be it a donation of their time, helping to purchase essential items for those in need, or dipping into their pockets to donate to local nonprofits, the heart our employees show is limitless.”
Ellen Rossi, President, EQT Foundation
