We all should find the news that natural gas production in Pennsylvania slipped slightly in 2022 troubling.

“Pipeline constraints — mostly due to political and extreme activism — constrict flow to key demand centers, including the Northeast, limiting the ability for more Americans and allies abroad to benefit from clean affordable Pennsylvania-produced natural gas,” David Callahan, president of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, explained to a reporter for the Center Square.

The development of natural gas has been a blessing for our region — bringing new, family-sustaining jobs, along with tax revenue for vital projects and a more diverse menu of ways to heat and power our homes and businesses.

We recognize that any sector of our economy, even one as integrated throughout the other sectors as energy, will see fluctuations — peaks and valleys on a line graph charting its growth.

But what is troubling about the dip in natural gas production is the likelihood to which Callahan alluded — that it is not a product of the ebb and flow of free markets but a self-imposed obstacle.

Building the pipelines to transport our domestically produced natural gas in no way impedes development of renewable energy. In fact, many of the same bureaucratic hurdles to pipeline construction are applied to renewable energy projects by “not-in-my-backyard” activists.

It is frustrating to see this sort of inefficient and bureaucratic morass hinder an industry that has done so much, both for our region and for the world. We hope our state’s leaders can overcome the hostility an extremist fringe has toward gas production and reform the permitting process so that pipelines can enable our energy needs to be met.