Corbett

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court said it would a hear a case that challenges the way the state manages oil and natural gas development on its publicly-owned forest land and how revenue from those operations can be allocated.

A Pennsylvania environmental group is asking the Commonwealth Court to reconsider a decision it made earlier this month allowing the state to lease forest and park land it owns for oil and gas drilling.

Polls show Pennsylvania’s Republican Gov.Tom Corbett narrowing the double-digit lead that Democratic challenger Tom Wolf has enjoyed for much of the campaign. The election has high stakes for the oil and gas industry as Wolf has pushed a severance tax and made energy reform a mainstay of his campaign.

Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) Secretary Christopher Abruzzo, along with the agency’s top attorney, resigned on Thursday following a rapidly unfolding scandal involving sexually explicit emails that were exchanged among dozens of former and current staffers in the state attorney general’s office.

The Marcellus Shale Coalition’s (MSC) annual conference in Pittsburgh was underscored with warnings and apprehension about a battle for public opinion between the oil and natural gas industry and those opposed to it.

Just hours after Gov. Tom Corbett signed a $29.1 billion state budget last week (see Shale Daily, July 10), the Pennsylvania Environmental Defense Foundation (PEDF) filed a request with the Commonwealth Court asking a judge to declare the move unconstitutional as part of its two-year effort to stop the administration from leasing public forest land for oil and gas drilling.

An environmental advocacy group on Wednesday called two former top officials from the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) to testify on behalf of its efforts to stop Republican Gov. Tom Corbett’s administration from leasing anymore state park or forestlands.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett issued an executive order Friday lifting a moratorium on new oil and gas leases in state parks and forests and replacing it with a measure that will allow such leases, provided the drilling occurs on nearby land and surfaces in the parks and forests are not disturbed.

York County, PA, businessman Tom Wolf, who took a seat at the front of the state’s Democratic primary for governor in January and never looked back, earned his party’s nomination on Tuesday to challenge Republican incumbent Tom Corbett in November.