Nick DeIuliis on How America’s Energy Revolution Is Reshaping the World

American Potential

In this episode of American Potential, host David Fromm interviews Nick DeIuliis, a veteran of the energy industry with over 30 years of exp

Key takeaways

• America's shift from energy dependence to self-sufficiency through shale gas innovation has reshaped geopolitics and economic stability.
• The legacy of regions like Western Pennsylvania and Appalachia provided foundational talent and infrastructure for the modern energy boom.

Main topics

• America's energy revolution
• Shale gas and fracking technology

Notable quotes

It really is revolutionary. I mean, you lived through it professionally. You know, I'm kind of observing it, but it really is pretty remarkable.

Conclusion

Nick DeIuliis underscores that America's energy revolution is not just a domestic success story

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) I'm very bullish and very excited about how the sort of follow-on opportunities, it really takes the impact of domestic energy to another level of magnitude, order of magnitude, or positive, how that plays out in many different ways. Some of them we can foresee and that are in front of us now, and some of those things that we can't foresee right now, but when we look at it in hindsight, we're going to say, yeah, that made sense that it unfolded that way. because of domestic energy. Speaker 3 (0:30) Yeah, it just strikes me, you know, from when we grew up, we're just in such a better position as a nation from a domestic energy standpoint. It really is revolutionary. I mean, you lived through it professionally. You know, I'm kind of observing it, but it really is pretty remarkable. Speaker 1 (0:49) Unbelievable in everything. I'll give you a sort of a domestic and an international component to this on what it means beyond even just sort of the private sector. Speaker 2 (1:00) Americans are capable of achieving extraordinary things when they have the freedom and opportunity to do so. This is American Potential. Speaker 3 (1:10) Hey everyone and welcome to the American Potential podcast. I'm your host David Fromm. So we've talked about energy on this podcast quite a bit just because it's such a big part of everyday life and you know demand just keeps growing. I mean it's particularly true right now when the heat index gets above 100 with high humidity in the summer and we want to keep cool. So today's guest is Nick Deulis, who's worked in the energy industry for 30 plus years and has been the CEO or chairman of the board of five public energy companies. He is currently the director and former CEO of CNX Resources Corporation and hosts a podcast and talks all the time about energy and his life's work in it. I'm super excited to talk to Nick here. So Nick, welcome. Thanks for joining American Potential. And I'm really excited to talk about such an important topic. Speaker 1 (1:58) Hey, likewise, David, and thanks for the opportunity. It's awesome. Speaker 3 (2:02) So you're a native of Western Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, a place that knows something about energy and just a great place. I don't know. I think it's still kind of a hidden gem. I think some people have some perception of the Pittsburgh area, Western Pennsylvania, but I love it. So you grew up there. How did you end up moving into the energy field? Speaker 1 (2:25) Well, I'd like to tell you it was part of a grand plan and just strategic planning from my perspective, but that would be a falsehood. It's a funny story. You're right. The legacy of Western Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, it's so immersed in energy. So much history has happened here across a broad range of the energy spectrum through the decades. And you sort of grow up in this region, and this sort of holds true for Appalachia as well, not just Western PA. where you're immersed in it, but you're not necessarily aware of it. And the history just permeates everything, but it's sort of so prevalent that you have to lose notice. It just becomes second nature to you. And my way of falling into the energy space was almost by accident, despite being immersed in it and living around it all my life. I wanted to, I'd have been just purely content to coming out of high school. head off to the steel mill or the railroad or do something like that with respect to a career, which was basically everything that I had known from a family and friend perspective. That's what was familiar to me. But I grew up, I was a child of the 80s. And during the 80s in this region, like a lot of different areas across sort of middle America and the Rust Belt, there wasn't really any opportunity. Things were going in the wrong direction when it came to those types of professions and industries. So, because of that sort of reality, I ended up going to college, Penn State, studied chemical engineering. And the overall effect of that, when I got out after four years, was, okay, I'm a chemical engineer, but I had no idea what a chemical engineer did. I didn't know anybody who was a chemical engineer. I didn't have any family that basically had even gone to college while I learned in engineering. So, I had this sort of disconnect on, I've got an accreditation, but what does a chemical engineer do? And lo and behold, through just back then, this would have been 1990, the way interviews used to be, right? This is before internet and before all those types of things. You went to the newspaper and I know I wanted to stay in the region. There was an ad for a chemical engineer for a place called Consol, our consolidation coal company. Speaker 2 (4:34) And Speaker 1 (4:34) he wanted an individual to work on power plant. issues and how different coals and fuels would perform in power plants and what the economic impacts were on bus bar costs and whatnot. And one thing led to another. That's where I started my career. And 35 plus years later, I'm basically still involved and part of the team with what is effectively a lineage, but the same sort of root genesis of a company, now a natural gas and midshipman player instead of a coal company. Speaker 3 (5:05) I mean, you've been in 30 plus years in energy. You've seen it kind of transform. I mean, you just said what you call the natural gas, even the company you've been with. What's that transformation been like and how have you progressed through that professionally? Speaker 1 (5:20) I don't know if there is another more seismic material evolution that we've seen in the energy field, in specific to domestic energy over the past three, four decades. The change in terms of what the thinking was strategically then, say in the early 1990s versus now, just think about how things have done a complete 180. I mean, it wasn't that long ago. Where are we going to get natural gas? How are we going to import natural gas from other places? You look at what the shale revolution brought to the table. And yeah, everybody talks about, you know, the technology aspects of horizontal drilling and completion technology. Certainly those were crucial drivers and ingredients to the recipe. But also you're finding ways to reinvent, reimagine, repurpose existing technologies, existing infrastructure for midstream assets. to power assets and everything in between, and also to sort of tap into that legacy of places like Appalachia and Western Pennsylvania with that sort of energy acumen. There were a lot of skill sets, a lot of sort of professions, a lot of programs that were sort of tweaked and were fined instead of having to be built from the ground up to start to develop, pun intended, that pipeline of talent to sort of mammy equipment, you know, apply to technology and do those types of things. So they were individually, these sort of contributing factors were somewhat foreseeable, not maybe earth shattering beyond the technological innovations that I mentioned. But in total, cumulatively, when you put them all together, just has completely reshaped not just the region of Appalachia and not just national domestic energy. But when you start thinking about the geopolitical implications and how it has sort of shifted things in a very good way. clearly evident in a very good way across the globe and how the sort of state of human beings have been accrued because of these types of things. An amazing, amazing transformation. So, yeah, in many ways, should have seen it coming when you look at the individual factors, I guess, or could have. And yes, it is certainly the next chapter in the energy sort of history and lineage of the nation and the region. But boy, when you look at the overall cumulative global impacts of this. We haven't seen something like this in decades and decades, perhaps a century. We had to go back to the haymaker well with natural gas in western Pennsylvania or sort of the automation of longwall mining with coal. And now coal was basically replacing wood as an energy source back in the day. What happened with a whole bunch of different industries tied to the power generation and there's other industries I mentioned, driving manufacturing and the creation of the steel industry and things like that. You'd have to go back to those types of innovations and options to sort of equal what we're seeing today. Speaker 3 (8:14) So the kind of the revolution that has happened over the last few decades with natural gas becoming such a central focus of our source of energy. Speaker 3 (8:28) How is that? You talked about the even international and