CANONSBURG, Pennsylvania — After years of ideologues and elites using the natural gas industry as a punching bag for politics and climate change activism, Nick DeIuliis, the CEO of CNX Resources, one of the largest natural gas producers in Western Pennsylvania, has had enough.

In remarks at a Rotary Club speech at the storied William Penn Hotel in downtown Pittsburgh last week, the blue-collar man who earned degrees in engineering and law, and his job at the top, decided to speak out to defend an industry that has become a regional economic game-changer.

Nick DeIuliis is not only the President and Chief Executive Officer of CNX Resources Corporation but is also a professional engineer and a lawyer. More importantly, he’s a man of the people, a fellow who grew up in blue collar Pittsburgh and has never forgotten his roots. He describes himself as an introvert; a fellow who is Pittsburgh through and through and admits the best part of visiting New York City is when the wheels lift off the LaGuardia runway and he’s on the way home.

He said that extremists are applying differing standards to the industries, and he challenged Mayor Bill Peduto’s comments last year about the petrochemical industry.

PITTSBURGH — To date, Darrin Kelly, the president of the powerful Allegheny-Fayette Central Labor Council, says not one of the Democratic candidates running for president has reached out to him to ask or listen to what union families in western Pennsylvania are looking for in a nominee to challenge President Trump in November. “Not one,” he says abruptly.

CNX Resources Corporation CEO Nick DeIuliis has worked at some iteration of CNX Resources for his entire career, watching the company morph from CONSOL Energy Inc., a coal company with a gas business on the side, into a pure-play shale gas producer with an affiliated midstream master limited partnership, CNX Midstream Partners LP, where he is also chairman and CEO.