Oct 17, 2024 By Patrick McDonnell 4 min read

Politicians often speak out against higher taxes, grocery bills, or utility rates, promising to work hard in office to prevent you from paying more. However, there is one notable exception: how much you pay for natural gas.

You probably won’t hear statements praising the idea of making you pay more to heat your home or take a hot shower. Politicians know that won’t sell. Instead, they provide the gas industry with justification to increase prices in the name of jobs and national security.

As of Sept. 19, natural gas costs $2.26 per thousand cubic feet (mcf). At least one gas fracking company cites $2.50/mcf as their break-even point. That means the gas is worth more sitting in the ground than for them to extract it. It’s simply not worth it to take the gas from the ground at the price they are getting.

Over the years, the industry has tried to sell the public other ways to use its products. First was plastics and chemical production along with the promise of jobs around the Shell ethane cracker plant in Beaver County. The jobs did not come, and while the price of gas didn’t go up, air and water pollution sure did.

Today, the fossil fuel industry is aggressively promoting a liquefied natural gas facility near Philadelphia, explicitly targeting the most overburdened and underrepresented communities in the area so that they can export more gas overseas.

The executives told state policymakers that Southwest Pennsylvania should produce hydrogen from natural gas. The plan involves producing hydrogen, capturing carbon, and then storing it underground. The problem is that these types of projects are massively expensive and, in the case of carbon capture, have never been done at this scale. That means they are going to politicians with their

hand out to receive more of your tax dollars with nothing to show for it except receipts from past failures like leaking pipelines, harmful air pollution, and dangerous explosions.

The reality is that the gas industry isn’t focused on creating jobs or “sticking it” to Russia’s Vladimir Putin. It’s focused on increasing the price of natural gas to increase its bottom line. If it can jack the price of natural gas to $4.00/mcf, it will more than double its share value. That is what this is all about. But without all of us paying more for their product, this won’t happen.

And, unfortunately for them, the energy market is pointing in the opposite direction. Fracked gas companies are seeing less build-out of new natural gas power plants because solar and wind power are so cheap. The amount of plastic used in our everyday lives has reached a tipping point, and societal demand for more plastic is on the decline. The fossil fuel industry needs other markets to boost the price and their value, so it will try to force new, taxpayer-funded facilities and export terminals into construction which will increase demand artificially.

And once that demand artificially increases, the price goes up, and every Pennsylvanian relying on natural gas in their home or business will see their rates go up.

We will pay for these subsidies, preferential policies, and industry projects on our tax bill. We will pay for it in our heating bill. We will pay for it at the grocery store. We will pay for it in increased insurance costs as our health suffers.

We will pay and the companies will eat the profits. It’s time to stop falling for this grift.

Patrick McDonnell is the president and CEO of Citizens for Pennsylvania’s Future (PennFuture), a nonprofit that focuses on clean energy and environmental issues.