Jamison Cocklin

Nearly one year after a landmark court decision diminished Pennsylvania’s regulatory authority and gave more power back to municipalities, new challenges against the oil and gas industry are setting the stage for key legal decisions across the state that could affect how townships handle development.

A Pennsylvania citizens group has succeeded in landing a proposed ordinance on the Allegheny County Council’s agenda that would impose a two-year moratorium on natural gas drilling on or under nearly all county-owned parkland.

Antero Resources Corp. and Noble Energy Inc. have submitted bids to develop a wildlife conservation area in Tyler County, WV, owned by the West Virginia Department of Commerce’s Division of Natural Resources.

Population change varied notably across four Pennsylvania counties and in nearby cities and towns that are home to a majority of the state’s Marcellus Shale development from 2000 to 2010, suggesting such trends are not linked to the level of economic activities in the areas examined, according to a new study.

Another company has purchased a chunk of land in the Appalachian Basin for hydrocarbon storage and terminal operations.

Two Utica Shale discovery wells drilled by Royal Dutch Shell plc in north-central Pennsylvania have piqued interest in the formation’s potential in a part of the Appalachian Basin that’s more than 100 miles northeast of the nearest horizontal Utica operator and more than 300 from the play’s sweet spot in eastern Ohio.

FERC has started to prepare its environmental impact statement (EIS) for Energy Transfer Partners LP’s (ETP) Rover Pipeline by gathering input from the public and other interested stakeholders in a series of public meetings in Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania, where the project will be built.

UGI Energy Services Inc. has completed two gathering projects in northeast Pennsylvania that will give a boost to utility customers with locally-sourced natural gas and help operators move more of their production to sales.

Scott Hamilton, who formerly worked as a land records manager for Consol Energy Inc., has pleaded guilty to mail fraud for a royalties scheme in which the U.S. Attorney’s Office said he stole $440,000 from the company’s interests at parcels in West Virginia and Illinois. Hamilton, 37, of Pennsylvania, was expected to make the plea after he reached an agreement with federal prosecutors in September (see Shale Daily,Sept. 23). In 2009, he established a fake company to file deed transfers that turned Consol’s royalty interests on the properties over to the phony business. Consol reported the missing royalties to the authorities. He is set to be sentenced in March.