Legality

One of the seven Pennsylvania municipalities that sued over the legality of Act 13, the state’s omnibus Marcellus Shale law, is now considering changes to its local drilling ordinance to comply with the measure, a move intended to help it collect more than half a million dollars in impact fee revenue.

The day before the Pittsburgh City Council voted to prohibit natural gas drilling there (see Shale Daily, Nov. 17), commissioners in South Fayette Township, on Pittsburgh’s southwestern edge, voted to ban drilling in conservation areas and all residential zones, including suburban communities and rural farmland.

The Pittsburgh City Council on Tuesday approved an ordinance prohibiting natural gas drilling in the city, despite questions about the ordinance’s legality.

Challenging the rules governing the elected, five-member New Mexico Public Regulation Commission, one of its charter commissioners is trying to get on the ballot for a third term. Currently the 1998 law forming the commission restricts commissioners to two four-year terms. The state attorney general’s office is conducting an investigation to see if a third term is in the cards for Jerome Block.

When natural gas prices were sky high a year ago, the “window looked wide open” for the long awaited Alaska natural gas pipe, which would carry supplies from the North Slope to the Lower 48. Months later, however, the announcements from producers are practically nil and President Bush’s energy policy proposal to open up more areas for drilling is barely moving. The abundant North Slope natural gas remains frozen, in more ways than one, and whether it will actually move through a pipe at some point in this decade remain questionable.

Under pressure from marketers and now from the state’s attorney general about the legality of some proposed rules, the Georgia Public Service Commission dropped a plan last week to require natural gas marketers to forgive monthly bills sent to customers more than 90 days late. Instead, the PSC unveiled a new package of rules that among other things would heavily fine marketers for repeated and willful noncompliance.

Under pressure from marketers and now from the state’s attorneygeneral about the legality of some of the rules, the Georgia PublicService Commission has dropped a proposal to require natural gasmarketers to forgive monthly bills sent to customers more than 90days late. Instead, the PSC unveiled a new package of rules thatamong other things would heavily fine marketers for repeated andwillful noncompliance.