David Spigelmyer, Matt Hammond & Anne Blankenship: Policies & priorities for natural gas industry

Pennsylvanians are realizing more than $2,000 in annual home energy savings; Ohio’s air quality progress is accelerating faster than the national average; and West Virginia experienced the country’s highest economic growth rate earlier this year.

This economic and environmental success across the broader tri-state region is being enabled by the natural gas revolution. For context, if Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia were a nation, it would be the world’s third-largest natural gas producer.

Already responsible for 85% of the growth in U.S. natural gas production since 2008, the Appalachian basin ranks as the country’s richest resource area with 41% of the total U.S. proved natural gas reserves, according to a recent Potential Gas Committee report.

This natural gas abundance establishes an opportunity for the region to be a long-term energy production leader.

For the tri-state’s economy, consumers and our environment, being a global energy production leader represents great news with much more to come.

As the U.S. became the world’s top natural gas and oil producer, it also led the world in carbon emission reductions because clean, affordable natural gas generated an increasingly larger share of electricity.

Carbon emissions tied to U.S. electricity have declined 28% since 2005 and are now at their lowest reported levels since 1987, according to the federal Energy Information Administration.

As an industry that puts health, safety and environmental conservation ahead of all else, our members are producing energy in cleaner and more efficient ways than a decade ago.

Our organizations and others — like the Environmental Partnership or the ONE Future Coalition – are collaborating, sharing best practices and continuously working together to improve the industry’s environmental performance.

Clean and abundant natural gas has enabled the U.S. to be a climate leader without sacrificing the energy reliability and affordability as well as the quality of life that we all enjoy and have come to expect.

Across our region, natural gas consumers have saved more than $90 billion over the past decade, according to new economic analysis conducted for Shale Crescent USA.

These energy savings are providing a compelling and lasting competitive edge for manufacturers to invest and grow jobs across our region.

From the Shell petrochemical manufacturing facility in Beaver County to an iron plant near Toledo scheduled to open next summer or the plastics manufacturer in Ravenswood, W.Va., American manufacturing — and the good-paying jobs that embody a thriving middle-class — is on the march.

To best position our region to continue realizing these broad benefits, we must get the policy equation right. Those policy discussions — along with the technical insights and opportunities for development in the basin — will take place during the ninth Shale Insight conference in Pittsburgh this week.

We will engage and hear from leaders, including President Trump, in a thoughtful discussion on the competitive, job-creating policies needed to realize the full benefits of our shale advantage. Some of those conversations will focus on local opportunity, and others abroad, as energy produced here strengthens our nation’s geopolitical standing. As U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry said, American natural gas exports are an opportunity to spread “freedom to the world.”

Policies reflect priorities and our priorities must be to grow jobs, increase natural gas use and advance initiatives that welcome — rather than discourage — investment.