Lawsuit

More legal fronts opened last week for the Atlantic Coast (ACP) and Mountain Valley (MVP) pipelines in what’s become a saga for the Appalachian shale gas takeaway projects that continue to face rising costs and delays.

An environmental group filed a lawsuit in an Idaho federal district court against the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), alleging the agency is stonewalling the release of information on the potential impact a proposed 5,000-well drilling project in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin (PRB) would have an endangered species.

A coalition of 21 environmental and citizens’ groups asked a federal district court in San Francisco to block the Trump administration’s plans to rescind most of an Obama-era rule governing associated natural gas flaring and venting on public and tribal lands.

Three Pennsylvania state senators who want the Delaware River Basin Commission’s (DRBC) moratorium on hydraulic fracturing eliminated have again filed to intervene in a federal lawsuit challenging the de facto drilling ban.*

A class-action lawsuit accusing Eversource Energy and Avangrid Inc. of artificially increasing natural gas spot market prices to benefit their electric generating assets between 2013 and 2016 has been dismissed by the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit has rejected a challenge filed by environmental groups against the Atlantic Sunrise project’s Section 401 Water Quality Certification (WQC) issued under the Clean Water Act by Pennsylvania.

A federal appeals court panel in Philadelphia has overturned a lower court’s decision to throw out a lawsuit filed by a small exploration and production company that is challenging the authority of the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) to enact a de facto moratorium on hydraulic fracturing (fracking).

West Virginia has filed a motion to dismiss EQT Corp.’s federal lawsuit challenging the state’s flat-rate lease statute, arguing that the state can’t be coerced by the company to reverse its laws.

A judge in Oklahoma has determined that a lawsuit filed after an earthquake, currently the second most powerful temblor recorded in the state’s history, can move forward with class action status.