Rule

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has taken action on three issues that Chairman Mark Wetjen said will have a lasting impact on energy-end users that may have fallen victim to “negative, unintended consequences” of the Dodd Frank Financial Reform Act.

In a move that hurts coal-fired electricity generators, the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld a rule adopted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that limits smokestack emissions in 28 central and eastern states that affect air quality of other states located downwind.

A swap product definition rule approved nearly two years ago by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), and particularly the final prong of a seven-part test used to determine if forward contracts with embedded optionality are subject to swaps requirements, need to be clarified or repealed, according to energy industry representatives.

Operators in North Carolina — should oil and gas drilling eventually be allowed in the state — will not be required to disclose all of the chemical additives used in hydraulic fracturing (fracking), but they will be required to prove certain chemicals should be deemed trade secrets.

In a series of separate votes Tuesday, five federal agencies — the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) — all issued final rules developed jointly to implement the Volcker Rule, which limits risk-taking by banks with federally insured deposits.

Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO) and 14 other House Democrats have called on Interior Secretary Sally Jewell to strike a balance among oil and natural gas development, the environment, and the public health in the department’s final hydraulic fracturing (fracking) rule.

Judging from the tenor and content of the comments that have been filed on the revised hydraulic fracturing (fracking) rule, the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) may have to go back to the drawing board on the draft rule for a third time.

The Wyoming congressional delegation Monday asked Interior Secretary Sally Jewell to exempt Wyoming and other western states currently regulating hydraulic fracturing (fracking) from the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) final rule on the practice, saying not to do so would delay permitting and discourage production on public land.

Officials in Robinson Township, PA, told leaseholders that they were welcome to contact Range Resources Corp. and try to convince the company to reapply for two Marcellus Shale drilling permits the township denied in February.