Appeals

A landowners group in central New York that supports natural gas development has established a legal fund to fight local bans and moratoriums on hydraulic fracturing (fracking).

Lenape Resources Inc., an oil and natural gas producer based in New York, has filed a lawsuit against a town in Livingston County for enacting a local drilling ban, and against the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) for failing to rein in the town over the ban.

More than 50 municipalities across upstate New York’s Finger Lakes region that touch the Marcellus Shale are asking a state appeals court for permission to weigh in on whether they may ban oil and natural gas drilling within their jurisdictions.

Two Republican state senators, key supporters of Marcellus and Utica shale gas drilling in New York, are anxious to see Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration move forward with the process to establish rules for drilling and high-volume hydraulic fracturing (HVHF).

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit voted 2-1 on Monday to vacate the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) disapproval of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality’s (TCEQ) Flexible Permits Program.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Environmental Appeals Board (EAB) has remanded permit applications for two wastewater disposal wells in Pennsylvania back to the agency’s Region 3 office in Philadelphia, on suspicion that inadequate testing of nearby drinking water wells was performed.

Patriot Water Treatment LLC of Warren, OH, is back in business after the Ohio Environmental Review Appeals Commission (ERAC) on Tuesday ruled that the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (OEPA) had overstepped its regulatory authority when it pulled the private operator’s permit to deliver natural gas drilling wastewater to the City of Warren for treatment.

The Texas Supreme Court has for a second time reversed a court of appeals judgement in a case involving a pipeline company’s use of eminent domain for a public use project and has remanded the case to a district court “for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit will review former Amaranth natural gas trader Brian Hunter’s appeal of FERC’s order denying rehearing of claims that he manipulated the natural gas market.