Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Industrywide Issues | Litigation | Pennsylvania | Pike County | Wayne County
Fed Judge Tosses Landowner Lawsuit Against DRBC for Frack Ban
Earlier this month U.S. District Judge Robert D. Mariani dismissed the Wayne Land and Mineral Group (WLMG) v. Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) lawsuit that argued the DRBC had “taken” the property rights of landowners in eastern Pennsylvania, robbing them of their right to allow shale drilling on and under their land. It’s a sad and bitter end for landowners in PA’s Wayne and Pike counties where there is bountiful Marcellus shale waiting to be extracted. Read More “Fed Judge Tosses Landowner Lawsuit Against DRBC for Frack Ban”
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro can rest easy now that he’s got his “fix” of $2.1 billion in federal taxpayer money promised to him by the Bidenistas before they left town. As you may recall, the Trump administration put an immediate pause on some federal funds after Elon Musk’s DOGE kids discovered massive fraud in government programs. The pause sent Shapiro into a tailspin like a junkie cut off from his drug supplier, so he sued to restore his money fix (see 
Yesterday, MDN told you that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approved a “fast-track” plan from the country’s largest electric grid, PJM Interconnection (which covers all or parts of 13 states, including PA, OH, and WV) to change how the grid operator decides which new power plants can connect to the system first (see 
A Washington County, PA, judge is closing the barn door about 12 years late. On February 7, Washington County Court of Common Pleas Judge Brandon P. Neuman ruled Sunoco Pipeline, LLC (i.e., Energy Transfer) did not have the eminent domain authority to take property for the Mariner East Pipelines in 2013 from Bradley and Amy Simon (in Washington County), and possibly many other property owners. The case alleges that while ME gained eminent domain authority later, when the company negotiated with the Simons (and potentially others), it did not have that legal authority, yet it claimed it did. The Simons signed a lease they otherwise would not have signed if they had full information. They either would not have signed, or perhaps negotiated a bigger payment. That’s the gist of the story—that ME fraudulently presented claims. 
At the end of the last legislative session in December, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, an extremist liberal, signed into law a new climate bill forcing a short list of Big Oil companies to pay $75 billion in “recovery” assessments over the next 25 years for their alleged role in causing mythical global warming (see 
Both conventional and unconventional (shale) drillers in Pennsylvania were supposed to submit a new annual report to the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) on December 10, 2023, detailing volatile organic compound (VOC) and methane emissions from their operations over the previous one-year period. Shortly before that deadline, the DEP suspended the due date and set a new due date of June 1, 2024 (see 
In March 2024, we reported that two Democrats and one anti-drilling RINO who run Bucks County, PA government (a Philadelphia suburb) fell for the bait by Big Green and filed a lawsuit against Big Oil companies for supposedly, knowingly, causing the Earth to toast to a cinder (see 
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a decision last July vacating (nullifying) the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) approval of Transco’s Regional Energy Access Expansion (REAE) project to bring gas from Pennsylvania to New Jersey and Maryland (see 
In May 2021, MDN told you that Louisville Gas and Electric Company (LG&E) had won Kentucky state approval to build a new 12-inch, 12-mile pipeline south of Louisville to supply gas to homes and businesses (including a Jim Beam distillery) in Bullitt County that can’t connect to LG&E’s local natgas utility system because it is currently maxed out (see 
BlackRock is the largest investment firm in the world, currently with $11.6 trillion of investments under management. Larry Fink, the CEO of BlackRock, pushed the so-called ESG (environment, social, governance) agenda for years. What the left and people like Fink mean by ESG is don’t invest in or use fossil fuel energy (E), everything is racist (S), and the government is always right when Democrats are in charge (G). Fink stopped using the ESG term in 2023, although he continued to push the ESG agenda of divesting from fossil fuel companies (see 
On Friday, three leftist judges who sit on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia (DC Circuit), one appointed by Joementia, one by Lord Obama, and a third by George H.W. Bush (Bush the 1st), threw out a rule the U.S. Department of Transportation had adopted during President Trump’s first term which allowed liquefied natural gas (LNG) to be transported by train. We warned you back in September the judges were signaling their intent to overturn LNG-by-rail during oral arguments (see 
In most states, when a deed or lease agreement is signed for mineral rights, it includes natural gas and oil on the theory that the gas and oil come from a mineral—shale rock. But that has not been the case in PA. Going back to a case in 1882, PA has had “the Dunham rule,” which separates natural gas rights from the broader concept of mineral rights (for background on the Dunham rule, see the MDN article