ProPublica Lists America's Top Ten Gas Drillers

Susan Phillips

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Susan Phillips tells stories about the consequences of political decisions on people's every day lives. She has worked as a reporter for WHYY since 2004. Susan's coverage of the 2008 Presidential election resulted in a story on the front page of the New York Times. In 2010 she traveled to Haiti to cover the earthquake. That same year she produced an award-winning series on Pennsylvania's natural gas rush called "The Shale Game." She received a 2013 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Journalism Award for her work covering natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania. She has also won several Edward R. Murrow awards for her work with StateImpact. In 2013/14 she spent a year at MIT as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow. She has also been a Metcalf Fellow, an MBL Logan Science Journalism Fellow and reported from Marrakech on the 2016 climate talks as an International Reporting Project Fellow. A graduate of Columbia School of Journalism, she earned her Bachelor's degree in International Relations from George Washington University.

September 1, 2011 | 5:24 PM

Several companies on the list are familiar household names, such as Exxon, BP, Chevron and ConocoPhillips. But smaller companies with large footprints in Pennsylvania such Chesapeake Energy and Southwestern are also in the top ten.

“Much of the growth in gas production has come from drilling into shale formations, which provided 23 percent of the nation’s gas in 2010, according to the EIA. Our list shows how integrated behemoths have expanded into this area as production has become proven, sometimes by swallowing up independents that led the way.”

ProPublica’s list also includes revenues, gas reserves and executive compensation.