The CEO of Appalachia’s largest natural gas producer says more pipelines will be built as data centers expand and coal plants retire.
Toby Rice, EQT chief, participated in a presentation by natural gas industry leaders at the state Capitol on Wednesday, which was briefly attended by Gov. Patrick Morrisey.
Morrisey wants to expand microgrids in the state to power data centers and is urging lawmakers to pass House Bill 2014 to do so. It was one of the priorities he set out in his inaugural State of the Union address.
Rice stated that this would entail building more pipelines.
“So we’ve got to get serious about this, and these data center opportunities in our state are they’re the reasons for us to get started and start building back and capturing some of the lost time that we had,” he told me.
Rice was referring to the eight years and $10 billion it took to complete the Mountain Valley Pipeline, which began service last summer and now transports 2 billion cubic feet of gas per day from north-central West Virginia to southern Virginia.
Lawsuits and protests slowed pipeline construction. But there is a push from Sens. Joe Manchin and Shelley Moore Capito made it across the finish line.
The pipeline is now owned by Pittsburgh-based EQT, and Rice believes more are needed not only for data centers but also for gas-burning power plants to replace aging coal units.
“These power plants are not brand new pieces of equipment when you look and you realize that the reliable power generators that are on our grid, average life is close to 30 years old,” said Mr. Jones. “We got to turn these things over, get back to building things.”
In the last 10 to 15 years, gas has largely displaced coal generation due to hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a gas production technique developed by Rice’s company with great success.
Rice, on the other hand, stated that the mantra has shifted from “drill, baby, drill,” to “build, baby build.”
“Absolutely,” he replied. “I think it’s inevitable.”
