Dcnr

The Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) has finalized its latest State Forest Resource Management Plan (SFRMP), releasing with it an oil and gas development position statement that reaffirms no new leases will be sold for state-owned land.

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.

General fund appropriations for the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR), which oversees hundreds of thousands of acres of state forest land leased by oil and gas drillers, would more than double under Gov. Tom Wolf’s 2015-2016 state budget.

The Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) has discovered that some Marcellus Shale operators could be wrongly deducting post-production fees from royalties paid to the state under land they have leased in public forests, according to a department representative.

Pennsylvania’s Commonwealth Court has ruled to uphold an executive order issued by Gov. Tom Corbett to lift a four-year moratorium on subsurface oil and gas leases in state parks and forests, determining that revenue from those leases could go toward the state budget rather than a special fund for conservation.

The Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) outlined a number of proposals for what will be classified as a surface disturbance in state forests and parks during a meeting of its natural gas advisory committee on Wednesday.

A judge in Pennsylvania said he will wait until after the state budget is enacted before considering an environmental group’s request to halt oil and natural gas leasing under state parks and forests.

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.

Despite higher oil and gas production in the Marcellus Shale, National Fuel Gas Co. (NFG) reported a 2% decline in profits during its fiscal fourth quarter, after the company set aside a reserve of $4.7 billion to possibly settle an ongoing rate case in New York State.