Trump to appear at gas conference in Pittsburgh next week

• Reid Frazier
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  Reid R. Frazier is an energy reporter for The Allegheny Front, a Pittsburgh-based public media outlet covering the environment in Pennsylvania. His work has aired on NPR and Marketplace.

President Trump is scheduled to come to Pittsburgh Wednesday Oct. 23 to headline the a natural gas conference at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center. It will be the president’s second energy-related appearance in the crucial 2020 political battleground of Western Pennsylvania in the past three months. In August, Trump spoke at Shell’s under-construction Beaver County ethane cracker site.

The president is expected to highlight “the importance of domestic energy development to America’s economic growth, environmental progress, and national security,” according to a release from the Marcellus Shale Coalition, one of the co-sponsors of the Shale Insight conference. Trump’s energy and environment agenda has focused on undoing Obama-era regulations: his administration has targeted over 80 environmental rules to roll back. Many of those have a bearing on the natural gas industry, including efforts to ease constraints on pipeline construction and limits on pollution from the potent greenhouse gas methane.

Continuing a trend begun under presidents Bush and Obama, US natural gas production continued to rise last year.

“President Trump recognizes the economic, environmental and national security significance of responsible American energy development and we’re excited and grateful to welcome him back to Shale Insight,” Marcellus Shale Coalition president David Spigelmyer said, in a statement.

In 2016, then-candidate Trump spoke at the conference, promising to unleash America’s fossil fuel sector by reining in what he called “overregulation.”

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