Opinion | Fossil Fuels’ Forthright Defender

Mr. Rice’s fierce nine-page response was chock full of knowledge refuting Ms. Warren’s declare that gasoline exports improve U.S. vitality costs. That assertion, he wrote, is “with out benefit” and fosters “a story that politicizes pure gasoline and related infrastructure in a way that runs counter to one in every of our key collective objectives, one we all know you share—addressing local weather change.”

Ms. Warren and her ideological compatriots fashion themselves champions of the little man and the atmosphere. Nonsense, Mr. Rice says: Their insurance policies imply larger costs for shoppers and extra carbon emissions. “When you’re blocking pipelines, you’re blocking the most important inexperienced initiative on the planet,” he says in a Zoom interview from his workplace in Carnegie, Pa., a former karate studio in a walk-up above a liquor retailer. Within the background are colourful portraits of

Andrew Carnegie,

Nikola Tesla,

Cornelius Vanderbilt,

John D. Rockefeller

and

J.P. Morgan.

Mr. Rice is a normal on the frontlines of an vitality battle whose consequence issues greater than ever after Russian’s invasion of Ukraine. The anti-fossil-fuel left is waging a multifront marketing campaign to maintain pure gasoline “within the floor,” as activists wish to say. Together with political efforts, they’re leveraging the executive state and courts to dam new pipelines which can be important to ship extra pure gasoline to prospects within the U.S. and abroad.

Power corporations have already given up on two main pipelines within the Northeast (PennEast and Atlantic Coast) prior to now two years. Even after profitable authorized challenges on the Supreme Court docket, they confronted mounting prices from allowing and authorized challenges elevating completely different objections. “The 4,000 pages of permits that now we have to submit have created 4,000 alternatives for environmental teams to assault,” Mr. Rice says.

He cites the Mountain Valley pipeline, which goals to ship low-cost gasoline from Appalachia to the Southeast. A 3-member panel of the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court docket of Appeals retains nitpicking the federal government’s environmental opinions, forcing the vitality corporations again to the allowing desk. (The identical three judges blocked the Atlantic Coast pipeline earlier than the Supreme Court docket later reversed 7-2.)

The pipeline is greater than 95% full, and builders had aimed to carry it into service this summer season. However litigation is delaying the ultimate work and inflating prices. “They discover themselves in a scenario the place that undertaking price was initially $3 billion budgeted. Now it’s $6 billion,” Mr. Rice says.

Meantime, the atmosphere will undergo due to the delays. There can be extra greenhouse-gas emissions, as a result of the gasoline the pipelines transport would change coal energy on the electrical energy grid.

Photo voltaic and wind energy may fill some however not the entire hole, as they rely on daylight and climate. Fossil gas is a needed backup. “I don’t suppose residents in South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, Florida acknowledge {that a} pipeline is being challenged in West Virginia,” Mr. Rice says. “Their vitality safety is being challenged due to folks trying to dam this pipeline.”

Issues are even worse within the Northeast, together with Ms. Warren’s state of Massachusetts. Three giant pipelines able to transporting sufficient gasoline from Appalachia to serve greater than 10 million households within the Northeast have been blocked. In consequence, the area should import LNG from overseas at a lot larger costs to warmth houses and energy the grid within the winter. (The Jones Act of 1920, a protectionist regulation of maritime commerce, limits the power to maneuver American LNG from the Gulf Coast to Northern states.)

Pure-gas costs one weekend this January have been eight occasions as excessive in New England as in Appalachia. “We’ll do a take care of Senator Warren: Construct a pipeline to Appalachia, and we’ll fill it for you at Appalachia costs,” Mr. Rice says, including that it boggles his thoughts “that New England is burning oil to create electrical energy” within the winter and “that over a 3rd of the residents use oil to warmth their houses.”

Ms. Warren was one in every of 10 Democratic senators, seven of them from the Northeast, who on Feb. 2 urged Power Secretary

Jennifer Granholm

“to take swift motion to restrict U.S. pure gasoline exports” to ease home vitality costs. Mr. Rice shot off one other blistering response, this time to Ms. Granholm. He made the purpose that an export ban would scale back the worldwide LNG provide by roughly 22%, elevating, not decreasing, vitality costs in New England and elsewhere.

“The issue could be very straight ahead,” he wrote: “The pipelines heading to New England are full, and consequently, we can’t bodily circulation that gasoline wanted to fulfill rising demand with out extra infrastructure. That’s it. And the way in which to resolve this downside is equally straight ahead: enable the completion of pipeline initiatives.”

If Mr. Rice is extra forthright than the everyday CEO, maybe it’s as a result of he didn’t rise by the company ranks. In 2007 he and two of his brothers fashioned Rice Power Inc. in his Pittsburgh house. Their father, a former BlackRock cash supervisor with vitality experience, helped them scout land in Pennsylvania’s shale-rich nation. “Our larger function again then—we have been younger guys with a number of buddies that fought within the battle [in Iraq]—was, we needed to assist make America energy-independent,” he says.

The brothers purchased drilling rights to a few of the best land in Appalachia and constructed their firm into one of many nation’s high 10 pure gasoline producers. In addition they developed a colourful fame. They performed skilled wrestler

Hulk Hogan’s

theme tune, “Actual American,” because the maintain music at their headquarters, and named wells after monster vans and comedian ebook characters. When coal miner

Alpha Pure Assets

went bankrupt, they confirmed up at an asset public sale donning Mickey Mouse T-shirts, shorts and blazers. (In our interview, alas, Mr. Rice is staid {and professional} in a white costume shirt.)

In 2014 the Rice brothers took their family-owned enterprise public. Just a few years later, Rice Power merged with rival Appalachian fracking firm EQT to type the nation’s largest natural-gas producer. Sad with EQT’s excessive prices, Mr. Rice and his brother Derek launched a proxy battle to appoint 9 administrators to the 12-member board. They received, and Mr. Rice turned CEO.

“Giving folks entry to low-cost, reasonably priced, clear vitality is the important thing to skyrocketing the standard of life,” he says. “There’s a really clear correlation: The extra vitality folks use, the higher the standard of life.” And that’s true in all places on the earth: “There’s three billion folks all over the world which have much less electrical energy than it takes to run a fridge.”

He’s rolling now. “One factor I feel that individuals don’t perceive is how a lot vitality demand there may be on this world. And when photo voltaic and wind aren’t able to assembly that vitality demand, folks will flip to their subsequent possibility, which is coal,” he says. Annual emissions from coal are up 500 million tons over pre-pandemic 2019 ranges: “To place that into perspective, that fully offsets the entire emission reductions we’ve accomplished from photo voltaic and wind right here in the US within the final 15 years.”

When Russia slowed gasoline deliveries to Europe final fall, the Continent had few alternate options however to ramp up coal energy. As gasoline costs surged amid a world provide scarcity, Asian nations, particularly China, burned extra coal. Elevated emissions from Chinese language energy and heating technology final yr offset all emissions reductions in the remainder of the world between 2019 and 2021. The world’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—barely three weeks after the senators wrote to Ms. Granholm—will additional constrain fossil-fuel provide.

The one approach for the U.S. to make a big dent in greenhouse-gas emissions, Mr. Rice says, is growing liquefied pure gasoline exports. By his calculations, the U.S. may improve gasoline manufacturing 50% and LNG exports fourfold over the subsequent decade based mostly on current natural-gas performs. Changing coal energy abroad with American LNG, he says, would “have the environmental influence of electrifying each automobile in the US, placing photo voltaic on each family in America, and including 54,000 industrial-scale windmills—like that might be double the U.S.’s wind capability—mixed.”

This could possibly be accomplished shortly and would require no technological breakthroughs. Already, he says, the local weather influence of U.S. LNG exports changing worldwide coal over the previous 5 years is larger than that of the U.S. photo voltaic business from 2005 to 2019.

Many of the nation’s 20 or so proposed LNG export services are on the Gulf Coast. However gasoline from Texas’ Permian Basin received’t be sufficient to provide them. So gasoline from Appalachia must be pushed by pipelines to the Gulf. Opponents will certainly proceed their effort to dam any new pipelines. One resolution is to construct further pipelines alongside rights of approach for current pipelines. That may fast-track allowing and reduce environmental disturbance. “There’s area in these proper of the way so as to add one other 3 ft price of pipe,” he says.

The Biden administration’s vitality insurance policies are a research in contradiction. On one hand, the president says he desires to assist wean Europe off Russian gasoline. On the opposite, his administration is making it more durable to construct extra pipelines and LNG export terminals. The White Home Council on Environmental High quality this week revised its Nationwide Environmental Coverage Act rules to require companies to contemplate the “oblique” local weather influence of infrastructure initiatives comparable to pipelines. That might make it almost not possible to approve new pipelines.

Surging vitality costs for the reason that Ukraine invasion have led European politicians to acknowledge they will’t change fossil fuels with renewables in a single day. However American politicians haven’t acquired the wake-up name. “There’s indicators of vitality insecurity occurring right here in America too,” Mr. Rice says, pointing to New England’s excessive vitality costs.

“I feel, as a result of lots of people don’t see us—and that’s a very good factor by the way in which, that’s by design—I feel lots of people perhaps take us with no consideration,” he provides. “Lots of people perhaps suppose that they will stay in a world that doesn’t depend on hydrocarbons.” That purpose is a great distance off, if it’s attainable in any respect.

Mr. Rice says his letters are meant to coach politicians. “If you assault oil and gasoline vitality producers right here in the US, you’re attacking their prospects, plain and easy,” he says. That makes “it more durable for us to do what we do—and that’s to supply low-cost, dependable, clear vitality to the world. It’s going to have unintended penalties.”

Has he heard again from Ms. Warren? “Not but. It’s been a few months. I’m nonetheless ready for a dialog. I’m nonetheless optimistic.”

Ms. Finley is a member of the Journal’s editorial board.