Op-ed: Natural Gas to the Rescue

[Editor's note: A version of this story appears in the June 2022 issue of Oil and Gas Investor magazine.]

This month I’m planning to take the stage and open up the annual DUG East Conference & Exhibition in downtown Pittsburgh. The conference comes at a particularly crucial time for the U.S. natural gas sector, one that has the promise to propel it to new heights and as a worldwide provider of energy security. But the path is littered with obstacles and challenges.

When the natgas industry descends on western Pennsylvania this year, it will be in the immediate wake of the state’s crucial senate primary and at the beginning of the campaign to the midterm election in November. Those elections, particularly in the Marcellus region, will be partly centered on the increase of shale gas production. With Russia’s war on Ukraine driving energy LNG demand from the west into high gear, U.S. producers are figuring out how to increase production to meet that demand while dealing with the rising costs of supplies, roadblocks on infrastructure and political discord. But rest assured, the opportunity for U.S. natgas producers has arrived as long as they can figure out how to increase production while still decreasing carbon emissions.

“The events unfolding in Eastern Europe … highlight the crucial role our industry can play in the energy security of the globe,” Chesapeake Energy Corp. CEO Nick Dell’Osso told analysts on a call earlier this year. “Being in a position to do so with as low a carbon footprint as we can is more important than ever.”