Fracking’s Broken Promise to Pennsylvania

In 2013, when the Appalachian fracking rush was still in its early days, then President Barack Obama extolled its benefits in his State of the Union address. Not only had natural gas already helped to lower America’s carbon emissions, it could protect Americans from the fluctuations of the global oil market, Obama said. And there was one more important benefit: “Nearly everyone’s energy bill is lower because of it.”

Obama’s words echoed fracking’s champions in politics, business and government, who boasted that natural gas would save Americans money—perhaps nowhere more fervently than in Pennsylvania, the epicenter of the boom.

“Having that kind of a resource and that kind of production of energy right in our own backyard does help to keep the price of natural gas down for customers and the price of electricity down too,” the former chairman of the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, Terry Fitzpatrick, told television viewers in 2011. “So it’s very important to the people of Pennsylvania.”

Donate Fossil Fuels Fracking’s Broken Promise to Pennsylvania Fracking was supposed to lower Pennsylvanians’ electric bills. Instead, they’re higher than ever—and they’re about to get worse. By Kiley Bense, Dan Gearino September 21, 2025 An aerial view shows a natural gas processing plant under construction in Pennsylvania’s Washington County on Oct. 26, 2017. Credit: Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images An aerial view shows a natural gas processing plant under construction in Pennsylvania’s Washington County on Oct. 26, 2017. Credit: Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images Related

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First in a series about rising electricity prices in Pennsylvania. Read the second story here.

In 2013, when the Appalachian fracking rush was still in its early days, then President Barack Obama extolled its benefits in his State of the Union address. Not only had natural gas already helped to lower America’s carbon emissions, it could protect Americans from the fluctuations of the global oil market, Obama said. And there was one more important benefit: “Nearly everyone’s energy bill is lower because of it.”

Obama’s words echoed fracking’s champions in politics, business and government, who boasted that natural gas would save Americans money—perhaps nowhere more fervently than in Pennsylvania, the epicenter of the boom.

But the savings Obama and others touted were followed by punishing increases that are on track to balloon even further as forecasts for demand skyrocket in the age of AI. The result is a growing energy affordability crisis, a nightmare collision of higher utility bills, climate change and shrinking federal aid.

After state Republicans fielded “distressed calls from Pennsylvanians asking for an inquiry into rising energy prices,” the Pennsylvania House Republican Policy Committee held a hearing in 2023 to learn more about the reasons for a “dramatic increase in energy costs for residents and businesses.”

“With our immense resources, and our status as a net-energy exporter, one would think the People of PA would receive lower energy prices,” the committee wrote. “But this is not the case.”

David Callahan, then the president of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, an industry trade group for companies fracking in the Marcellus formation, said natural gas was “a solution to poverty” that is “most beneficial to lower income individuals and communities of color.” He testified that the state Department of Environmental Protection was to blame for rising prices because permitting delays held up fracking projects.

That argument didn’t address a fundamental contradiction: If Pennsylvania is producing so much more gas, why are prices going up? Why aren’t its residents benefiting more from the resource beneath their feet?