Legislation

The natural gas industry went before Pennsylvania lawmakers to again spar with representatives of the nuclear power sector, who pushed in recent testimony before the state Senate’s consumer protection committee for passage of a bill requiring electric distribution companies and suppliers to purchase credits from nuclear plants.

Officials in two of Colorado’s largest oil and natural gas producing counties are pushing a ballot measure that would repeal reform legislation on the fast track to the governor’s desk.

The Colorado Senate on a 19-15 vote Wednesday passed and sent to the lower House a fast-track omnibus bill to extensively reform the oil and natural gas industry, empowering local governments to the exclusion of regulators.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis and legislative leaders want to reform oil and natural gas regulations, allowing more local government input on future energy development and, among other things, strengthen forced pooling requirements for producers.

With less than a month before the West Virginia Legislature’s 60-day regular session concludes, a suite of oil and natural gas-related bills is advancing in what has so far been a calmer year for the industry at the capitol, especially compared to 2018 when it won a long-fought battle for co-tenancy.

Three weeks into the lame duck period on Capitol Hill, a bipartisan group of House lawmakers has introduced a landmark proposal to enact a national carbon tax, from which all of the revenue would be returned as a rebate to taxpayers and some of their dependents.

A Republican-sponsored bill introduced in the Pennsylvania House earlier this year to update the state’s Oil and Gas Act of 1984 to clarify language and address the current challenges facing conventional producers has passed and now moves to the Senate for consideration.

Two Democratic lawmakers from Northeast Ohio have introduced a bill that would see the communities they represent and others where injection wells are located receive more of the fees collected to dispose of oil and gas waste.

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper has signed into law a bill to direct excess environmental-related funds to the long-term mitigation of abandoned oil and natural gas wells. House Bill 18-1098 addresses the adverse impacts from drilling activities administered by the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission and mandates that any excess funds in the account at the end of each fiscal year not be diverted to a broader state fund.