We strive to be the safest operator in the Appalachian Basin through our use of leading-edge technology, robust training, and clear safety guidelines. Our Family, Obligation, Communication, Understanding, and Support (FOCUS) program and training promotes an overall culture of safety and serves as a tool to coach our employees and contractors.
In 2023, we:
Implemented a comprehensive plan to refocus our entire workforce on the importance of operating safely.
Recorded zero contractor and employee fatalities.
Performed 55 audits to verify that all our contractors and employees complied with our comprehensive safety standards.
Partnered with West Virginia University to help expand their oil and gas training program and curriculum — including a $500,000 3-year commitment from the EQT Foundation.
Discussion of management systems used to integrate a culture of safety throughout the exploration and production lifecycle
3-3
SASB EM-EP-320a.2
We believe that safety is a precursor to achieving operational excellence. The safety of our employees and contract workers — and the environment in which they work — is a top priority as the nature of natural gas extraction activities, including well operations and water hauling, has the potential to pose health and safety risks to workers. Our laser focus on safety has only intensified, following two contractor fatalities in 2022. We take these tragic accidents very seriously and implemented a comprehensive plan during 2023 to refocus our entire workforce on the importance of operating safely. We are proud to report the strong success of our 2023 safety campaign, which resulted in year-over-year improvements in most of our safety performance metrics, a nearly five-fold increase in “stop works” initiated by our workforce, and, most importantly, we had zero contractor and employee fatalities during 2023. We continue to push this positive momentum into 2024, with our new safety campaign focused on risk hazard assessments. At EQT, we believe that a risk ignored is equivalent to a risk taken. Every time we ignore hazards or by-pass the risk assessment process, we set ourselves up for harm. In 2024, we are refocusing our workforce to minimize even the smallest risks, so that we can reduce the potential for incidents.
Safety Culture
As we strive to be the safest operator in the Appalachian Basin, we implement technologies, robust training, and clear safety guidelines to ensure all workers — including our large contractor base — have the resources, training, and support necessary to work safely.
We prioritize safety objectives over business objectives, and we conduct our active business operations in accordance with the applicable health and safety requirements established by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and other regulatory bodies such as the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PADEP), the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, and the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection.
Our FOCUS program and training promotes an overall culture of safety and serves as a coaching tool for our employees and contractors. Click on the graphic below to learn more about each component of our FOCUS program.
Family is about expanding our connections and caring for the people here at work and at home, and treating everyone as our family.
O is for Obligation
Each one of us has an obligation to perform our jobs efficiently and safely in a manner that protects the health and safety of ourselves and those around us.
C is for Communication
Communication is engaging in respectful conversations that focus on our common goals and values
U is for Understanding
Understanding is being aware of our safety goals and how we can each contribute to achieving them
S is for Support
Support is working together to create an environment where Zero is Possible, a safe working environment to ensure we all return home safely to our families
We apply a FOCUS lens to our safety management processes, training, contractor guidance, and interaction with local communities. Our employees received the program so well that we expanded the FOCUS training to include all contractors. We assess our contractors’ performance and provide additional training and coaching to them as needed.
The FOCUS program exemplifies our commitment to an environment where “Zero is Possible,” and ensures that all employees and contract workers understand why safety is important to our EQT family — at home and on the job. Employees and contractors who exemplify our safety culture and go beyond expectations are rewarded with digital challenge coins for each letter of the FOCUS acronym.
In 2023, we continued to hold in-person leadership and safety culture sessions and expanded them to better align with and promote our new, company-wide Stop Work Complacency campaign. Through this campaign, we aim to further educate our employees on workplace safety and the prevention of future accidents by combatting complacency. Employees were made aware of potential dangers in their work environment and were reminded to closely monitor these dangers. In the event any worker identifies a potential risk, they are authorized and encouraged to suspend work without hesitation or fear of retribution. EQT leadership, as well as key business partners’ leadership teams, also participated in safety culture sessions to demonstrate our dedication to a stronger safety culture across our operational footprint.
Industry Collaboration
As a responsible corporate citizen, we look for opportunities to work with our peers to help improve overall industry safety performance. Through our active membership in the ISNetworld® (ISN) Appalachian Working Group, we share safety-related best practices and innovations with a group of natural gas producers to improve safety performance within the Appalachian Basin. We also require all our contractors to be ISN members and to use the ISN digital platform to upload and track safety statistics, which are accessible to us for review. We also completed annual updates to our safety scorecard and processes for our contractors.
In 2023, we began to host roundtable discussions with nine fellow operators in our region. These first meetings, which grew out of our push to improve safety for water haulers, evolved into broader discussions around lessons learned across our collective operational footprint — and have since been formalized into the Appalachia Safety Association (ASA). The ASA meets each quarter to share safety insights and pursue collaborative opportunities to ensure worker safety in our region.
Governance
Our Safety department works in close collaboration with the Environmental, Fleet, and Security teams. We use a centralized database to track all EHS data in a single location, which is updated monthly and made available to all EQT employees. The database provides our entire organization with transparency on our overall EHS performance and the performance of individual departments.
The Vice President, EHS, who reports directly to our Chief Executive Officer, leads the Safety department. Five times a year, the Vice President, EHS provides EHS-specific updates to the Public Policy and Corporate Responsibility (PPCR) Committee of our Board of Directors.
We maintain an annual cash incentive compensation plan for our employees, which we refer to as our Short-Term Incentive Plan (STIP). The STIP is based on our successful achievement of specific financial, operational, and EHS performance measures, established annually by the Management Development and Compensation Committee of our Board of Directors. In 2023, safety performance accounted for 15% of the annual incentive compensation opportunity under the STIP. We believe this provides a meaningful incentive for all our employees to keep their focus on safety and further reinforces the importance of safety as part of our culture. For more information about STIP and related performance metrics, see our 2024 Proxy Statement.
EHS Management System and Risk Identification
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11.9.2
Occupational health and safety management system
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11.9.3
Hazard identification, risk assessment, and incident investigation
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11.9.5
Worker participation, consultation, and communication on occupational health and safety
403-7
11.9.8
Prevention and mitigation of occupational health and safety impacts directly linked by business relationships
403-8
11.9.9
Workers covered by an occupational health and safety management system
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403-2
403-4
403-7
403-8
Our EHS Management System is informed by the federal and state regulatory requirements of OSHA, the PADEP, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, and the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection. Our EHS Management System enables us to systematically identify and manage workforce safety risk by communicating our EHS Policy, awareness and training, workforce safety procedures, performance monitoring, and safety verification processes to our employees and contractors at all locations. We are committed to annual audits of our EHS Management System to provide updates when needed and ensure alignment with current issues and regulatory requirements. In 2023, our EHS team performed 55 audits to verify that all our contractors and employees complied with our comprehensive safety standards.
The identification, prioritization, and management of risks associated with our health and safety performance is core to our EHS Management System. Our detailed risk and hazard analysis (RHA) process uses a hierarchy of safety controls to pursue, set up, and sustain proper safeguards. Before any fieldwork begins, the RHA requires a systematic safety review of the site construction plan and all daily onsite workforce activities. If a task is deemed unsafe, everyone onsite has the obligation and authority to stop work without fear of retribution or discipline. To ensure the RHA functions properly, we use a multilayered verification process and a qualified team of internal and external safety experts to oversee observation, testing, inspections, and audits. We share verification results with our leadership team, and we take action to strengthen any potential weaknesses identified.
To engage our workforce in safe work decision-making, we conduct safety meetings, stand-downs, and leverage our emergency hotline. We require all employees, contractors, and vendors to report an emergency, medical issue, fire, spill, safety concern, or other issue that may occur. Our toll-free emergency hotline operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Our call center received 3,641 calls in 2023 and has played a critical role in the collection of necessary information to dispatch appropriate individuals and agencies to mitigate incidents. Members of the EHS department field these calls to ensure the right teams are notified to respond.
We also maintain a community hotline number for community members to report safety concerns; see Economic and Societal Impact for more information on how we protect our communities.
Emergency Hotline: 1-833-990-1534
Safety Training
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11.9.6
Worker training on occupational health and safety
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11.9.11
Work-related ill health
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403-10
Safety training is a critical component of our workplace safety initiatives. All EQT employees receive core safety training annually, along with more frequent specialized training for employees tailored to the work performed and the types of issues faced by those employees. We customize specialized training subjects and delivery methods as needed. For example, in 2023, our monthly safety meetings with field employees, held both virtually and in-person, covered issues such as:
Stop work authority and our associated complacency campaign
Proper use of personal protective equipment
Incident reporting and investigation
Regulatory citation information
Emergency preparedness
Outdoor safety
Safe driving
Industry-specific technical safety training
We continue to leverage our FOCUS training program for all employees and contractors, and we provide additional training on chemicals and chemical handling to ensure the chemicals used in our hydraulic fracturing processes are not misused. During 2023, our field-based employees completed approximately 2,984 combined hours of EHS training, while our office-based employees completed approximately 934 combined hours of EHS training. Our contract workers completed approximately 36,887 total hours of EHS training hosted by EQT. Safety data sheets and hazard communications, including monthly safety newsletters distributed to our employees and contractors, help reinforce our trainings.
Highlight Story
EQT and West Virginia University Partner on Safety Program
In 2023, EQT Corporation and the EQT Foundation partnered with West Virginia University (WVU) to help expand their oil and gas training program and curriculum — including a $500,000 3-year commitment from the EQT Foundation.
Following our investment and expanded partnership, WVU’s Occupational Safety and Health Extension was awarded an OSHA Susan Harwood Training Grant in 2023. The grant, which aims to help underserved, high-hazard industry workers and employers, will help the extension program provide training and education on workplace safety, hazard recognition, and abatement to 350 workers in the oil and natural gas industry.
“At EQT, we place the highest priority on the safety of our employees, contractors, and communities,” said Mike Lauderbaugh, Vice President, Environmental, Health, and Safety. “Our team is proud to share our best practices and learnings to support WVU in developing a curriculum that will help make our industry safer and better.”
Contractor Safety
Contract workers made up approximately 79% of our total workforce hours in 2023 — requiring transparency from and collaboration with our partner companies. All drilling, construction, maintenance, or other operations-related contractors we use must agree to adhere to our EHS Policies and Program, which are updated regularly to reflect best practices. These policies apply to all work performed by a contractor’s employees and any subcontracted employees.
Contractors must also pass a qualification process developed by ISN, which includes our contractor safety auditing procedure and requires they provide vital information on their performance in key areas including:
Safety management systems
Injury and illness statistics
U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) inspection compliance
U.S. DOT motor carrier safety rating
Written safety programs and safety training
Experience modification rating
Fatality history
Our EHS department collaborates with our Supplier Relations Management group to oversee contractors’ compliance with our safety standards. If a contractor does not meet our safety standards, then our EHS team works with the supplier, applicable operations departments, and Supplier Relations Management to seek improvement. If the supplier does not improve, then safer service providers are engaged. Contractors who fail to meet our standards are not permitted to continue to work on our sites.
We remain engaged with our contractors as work evolves to achieve our joint commitment to safety. We track contractor safety incident rates, specifically injury and vehicle accidents, provided by contractors via ISN.
We have also automated certain aspects of our operations to improve efficiency and enhance workers’ safety. In our drilling operations, we perform remote geosteering and use directional drilling services. We use satellites to remotely gather and analyze our wellbore data for quality control issues. We remotely adjust the speed and direction of drilling and, if necessary, send instructions electronically to crews on location to make corrections. This not only decreases the number of onsite personnel, thereby reducing the potential for safety issues, but it also allows us to use the best geosteerers and our business partners' best directional drillers and personnel to perform services on multiple wells and rigs simultaneously.
In our completions operations, we have eliminated the use of hammer unions — a known failure point in the industry — in our hydraulic fracturing operations. We replaced the labor associated with carrying and hammering hundreds of connections with a controlled, mechanically assisted rig-up with connections that are bolted together instead of hammered. Elimination of hammer unions from our hydraulic fracturing operations has decreased the risk of failed connections, thereby improving equipment life to create a safer work environment that requires less labor and has a lower operational cost.
We have automated our wellhead controls, which decreased the number of personnel needed on location to execute valve actuation and increased valve reliability. Our automated system opens and closes the valves on our drilling rigs and greases the valves on a set schedule, increasing the life of each valve.
Additionally, we perform vibration analysis on our wells, which informs our pump operator if the well pump is operating within a specified “danger zone.” Avoidance of the danger zone extends the life of the pump and decreases the frequency at which pumps need to be rebuilt. Rebuilding well pumps is a labor-intensive process that increases the risk of workforce injuries and environmental spills. When we reduce the number of required pump rebuilds, we improve our efficiency and our safety and minimize our environmental impact.
Road and Traffic Safety
Safe driving is an area of particular importance for us as our site activities at times require heavy truck traffic that can affect surrounding communities. Our EHS Program explicitly addresses safe vehicle operation and outlines safety expectations for both employees and contractors. In addition to our FOCUS training for water haulers, we maintain Traffic Control Plans that outline speed limits, curfews, and route restrictions for all active sites and Fleet Safety Procedures for employees, contractors, and subcontractors.
We require all employees and contractors on a location to watch a safety video and pass a test created by our EHS department. Workers then receive a safety badge with 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 with the provision of real-time information about on‑location workers so we can provide an accurate headcount to first responders should an incident occur.
To encourage drivers to comply with applicable guidelines, all EQT work vehicles have a Geotab global positioning system (GPS) device used to track driver behaviors. These GPS devices allow us to monitor vehicle location more easily so we can determine who was involved if we receive a community complaint or if an accident occurs. Additionally, we hire private road monitors with law enforcement backgrounds to continuously surveil our truck traffic once operations begin. Not only do these individuals help ensure our employees and contractors follow our guidelines, they also support community safety through investigation of community complaints on worker violations. Read more about how we work with communities to address safety concerns in Economic and Societal Impact.
We also work closely with driving safety and industry experts to reduce risks associated with operating our vehicles. Both new and experienced drivers must demonstrate their safe driving skills through a periodic supervisor observation session. New employees undergo a series of computer-based and behind-the-wheel training programs, including a defensive driving module. We provide additional instruction for employees who operate specialty vehicles or haul trailers, perform off-road travel, or drive construction vehicles on public roads. One such course is a U.S. DOT training, which enables drivers to cross state lines and remain in compliance with relevant laws. We require our drivers to recertify every 3 years. In 2023, we offered 16 unique training courses to our drivers — including vehicle, all-terrain vehicle, crane operation and snow mobile trainings. We require contractors to record miles driven in ISN to establish preventable vehicle accident rates. Our contractors drove approximately 40,960,238 miles for us in 2023 and had a preventable vehicle accident rate of 2.59. Read more about our approach to Transportation in Operational GHG Emissions.
We require all water hauling vendor vehicles to install video cameras — one that faces the driver and another that faces the roadway. These cameras allow us to conduct periodic spot checks on the drivers to verify that they follow the bonded routes, adhere to posted speed limits, and that they drive undistracted. Footage from these cameras has also helped us determine the cause of accidents and share lessons learned in training sessions to further enhance our safety culture.
We also continue to use our Water App, which allows us to track and monitor water trucks and other vehicles operated by our service providers to evaluate safety practices, source vehicles more efficiently, and reduce mileage. We believe that this insight continually increases the effectiveness of our incident response times. For more information, see Water.
Occupational Health Services
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11.9.4
Occupational health services
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Healthy employees are more adept at performing their roles safely. Industrial hygienists routinely review the physical demands of our employee job functions, while they collaborate with the EHS department on repetitive motion hazards and the potential for elevated noise exposure. In addition, we perform post-offer and fit for duty testing to ensure that our employees can safely perform their jobs. We also provide all our employees with free access to the Calm App to help manage stress. Read more about our employee wellness initiatives in Talent Attraction and Retention.
Our EHS, HR, and third-party medical services partners play a key role in ensuring the occupational health of our employees. EHS and HR collaborate with a third-party case management provider, Work Partners, to oversee health and safety reporting. Employee health information is stored in a secure environment accessible only to those directly involved in the management and reporting process, per our Personally Identifiable Information Policy.
(1) Total recordable incident rate (TRIR), (2) fatality rate, (3) near miss frequency rate (NMFR), and (4) average hours of health, safety, and emergency response training for (a) direct employees and (b) contract employees
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403-9
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SASB EM-EP-320a.1
Our most important goal is to ensure our workers make it home safely. In 2022, we were devastated by two separate incidents where this did not occur. In both incidents, contractors lost their lives while completing water hauling driving assignments for EQT. These tragic fatalities resulted in immediate action to address these safety gaps in our training and management and to prevent future injuries. Following each of these incidents, we conducted an onsite investigation in collaboration with representatives from the impacted service provider, state police, local emergency services, and OSHA to determine the cause of the incident. We then held a “safety stand down” with all employees from the impacted service provider and a roundtable meeting with our water hauler drivers to discuss the incident, and provided additional safety training. We also implemented a company-wide Stop Work Complacency campaign in response to these incidents. As a result of this campaign, our workforce initiated five times as many “stop works” in 2023 compared to 2022.
Stop Work Authority
Target
450 400 350 300 250 200 150 100 50 0
24
74
370
2021
2022
2023
Stop Work Authority Initiated
Furthermore, and most importantly, we had zero contractor and employee fatalities during 2023. As a result of the two contractor fatalities that occurred in 2022, the funding multiple for the safety intensity component of our 2022 STIP — which accounts for 10% of the total payout of our company-wide short-term bonus compensation — was reduced by 40%, which resulted in direct financial consequences for our workforce.
Additionally, due to the inherent risks involved with water hauling, we prioritized the expansion of our water pipeline network in 2023 to take as many water trucks off the road as possible. Read more about our water network in Water.
When a safety incident occurs, we record the nature of the event in our safety incident management database under OSHA injury and illness recordkeeping requirements. After each incident, we conduct a thorough incident review to determine potential causes, identify options to prevent recurrences, and highlight opportunities to improve training, processes, and procedures using a hierarchy of safety controls. We have a severity chart for all incidents, and each incident type is associated with a certain number of hazard points. Our departments each have an annual maximum target on the number of hazard points they can accumulate — with the aim to accumulate as few hazard points as possible. Our personnel also conduct weekly incident reviews with senior management. When we track and analyze safety incidents, we can assess the effectiveness of our approach to safety management and strive for continuous improvement.
We track top indicators — including near-miss incidents, number of trainings held, audits performed on contractors and our own operations, and survey results — to identify areas for improvement. We also use several safety management verification processes to evaluate our safety program, including:
A safety team inspection program;
A safety team contractor monthly safety auditing program; and
A worksite auditing program.
We analyze all results from our safety verification programs for potential systemic issues and establish actions to promote continuous and sustainable program improvement.
Majority of injuries caused by tick bites requiring prescription medication
Majority of injuries caused by bee sting, struck by/against (aerial work platform, car door, stainless line), hand/finger injuries due to being caught in/between equipment
Majority of injuries caused by struck by/against equipment or ergonomic
During 2023, we experienced a larger number than usual of employees who reported tick bites and bee stings, which negatively impacted employee TRIR. Excluding such incidents, our 2023 TRIR for full-time employees would have been 0.21.
Most of our workforce injuries result from same level falls, hands or fingers caught in or between equipment, or employees being struck by or against tools and equipment. We have created videos for all employees to watch on prior safety incidents such as these. In the videos, the individuals who were injured describe what occurred and what could have been done differently to prevent the incident from occurring. Our field employees received these videos very well because the message comes from their peers. Additionally, hazards such as viruses, noise, and organic compounds have the potential to cause ill health for our employees. We identified all health and safety-related hazards through testing, monitoring, and sampling.
Number of fatalities because of work-related ill health
0
0
0
Number of cases of work-related ill health
0
0
1
Contractors
Number of fatalities as a result of work-related ill health
0
0
0
Number of cases of work-related ill health
0
0
0
Near Miss Frequency Rate
Metric
2021
2022
2023
Full-time employees
1.78
0.68
0.63
Contract employees
1.42
1.84
2.43
Short-service employees
0
0
0
Preventable Vehicle Accident Rate
Metric
2021
2022
2023
Employees
1.32
1.33
1.99
Contractors
1.77
2.56
2.59
While our preventable vehicle accident rate has increased, it is notable that the severity of the incidents has generally decreased. For example, our 2023 employee preventable vehicle accident rate consists of a total of 14 incidents, 13 of which involved a vehicle striking a fixed object (typically a cement barrier). Only one incident involved another vehicle. Nonetheless, we have incorporated additional safe driving trainings into our Stop Work Complacency campaign to remind our drivers of the importance of safe driving and being mindful of their surroundings.
At EQT, we continually look for ways to improve the transparency of our Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) disclosures. With that in mind, we began publishing our days away, restricted, or transferred (DART) Rate, beginning with our 2022 ESG Report. DART Rate is a lagging indicator used to measure OSHA-recordable workplace injuries and illnesses that result in time away from work, restricted job roles, or permanent transfers to new positions. A lower DART Rate generally indicates safer business operations with a DART Rate of 0.00 as the “best” or “safest” rate possible. Our employee DART Rate for the prior 3 years is provided below.
Days Away, Restricted, or Transferred (DART) Rate[8]
[1] No workers have been excluded from our workforce health and safety data. All rates are calculated per 200,000 hours worked.
[2] 2021 safety metrics do not include incidents related to the Alta Assets and Alta employees and contractors which occurred prior to EQT’s acquisition of such Alta Assets on July 21, 2021.
[3] Inclusive of cases with a return-to-work date greater than six months from date of incident.
[6] 2021 safety metrics do not include incidents related to the Alta Assets and Alta employees and contractors which occurred prior to EQT’s acquisition of such Alta Assets on July 21, 2021.
[7] All our employees are included in our Worker-Related Ill Health disclosures, except for workers from staffing agencies.
[8] DART Rate calculated as the number of OSHA recordable injuries and illnesses that resulted in days away, restricted or transferred, multiplied by 200,000, divided by the total number of hours EQT employees worked during the applicable year.
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