3rd Circuit Vacates NJ Water Permit for NESE Pipeline Project
Big Green scored a win yesterday — but not the win they’re telling you they got. On Tuesday, September 8, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit vacated the Clean Water Act Section 401 water quality certification (WQC) that the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) issued last November for Williams/Transco’s Northeast Supply Enhancement (NESE) project — the $1 billion, 400,000 Dth/d expansion that carries Marcellus gas from Pennsylvania, across New Jersey, under Raritan Bay, and into New York City (see Trump Won: New York & New Jersey Issue Water Permits for NESE Pipe and Radicals Sue NY, NJ to Block NESE Pipeline Water Permits). Read the opinion closely, though, and the court flatly rejected the radicals’ headline argument. It did find, however, that NJDEP wrote a sloppy permit and didn’t show its work. The pipeline isn’t dead. The paperwork is. Read More “3rd Circuit Vacates NJ Water Permit for NESE Pipeline Project”
West Virginia has sued the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission in federal court, arguing that two Pennsylvania laws — Act 40 of 2017 and Act 114 of 2020 — built a wall around the state’s “alternative energy credit” market and locked out every power producer outside Pennsylvania’s borders. West Virginia Attorney General JB McCuskey filed the 54-page complaint on September 3 in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, and here’s the kicker: the PUC’s own annual report, published seven months earlier, told the legislature that these very rules needed a second look. 
A federal judge in Knoxville has thrown out the environmental review behind the Tennessee Valley Authority’s $2.5 billion Kingston gas plant — and almost nobody has seen the ruling, because it’s sealed. We pulled the public docket and found the whole story hiding in TVA’s own court filings. On August 31, U.S. District Judge Curtis L. Collier granted partial summary judgment to Appalachian Voices, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Sierra Club, represented by the Southern Environmental Law Center. The judge vacated TVA’s Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) and Record of Decision (ROD) for the plant, which is replacing nine coal units at the old Kingston Fossil Plant in Roane County, Tennessee — the site of the infamous 2008 coal ash spill. 
Anti-drilling group Protect PT has opened a new front against the biggest gas-fired AI project in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania. On Aug. 25, Protect PT and two Upper Burrell residents — Allen Uhler and Guy Fuller — filed a land use appeal in Westmoreland County Court challenging the township supervisors’ approval of TECfusions’ work at the former Alcoa/Arconic research campus. Notably, the appeal doesn’t attack the gas turbines or the Marcellus wells feeding them. It attacks a piece of paper. Or rather, the absence of one. 
A federal judge in Syracuse dropped a legal anvil on New York’s $75 billion climate shakedown yesterday, ruling that the state’s Climate Change Superfund Act is preempted by federal law and cannot be enforced. It’s a complete win for West Virginia AG J.B. McCuskey, the 21 other state AGs who joined him, and the industry groups that piled on. We’ve been following this one since Gov. Kathy Hochul signed the bill in the waning days of 2024 (see 
Here’s a pipeline fight where the bad guys aren’t the greens. Last Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit sided with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and Enbridge subsidiary East Tennessee Natural Gas (ETNG), tossing out a challenge brought not by environmental radicals but by the pipeline’s own customers — a group of small-town gas utilities in Tennessee, Virginia, and Alabama who said they were being stuck with the bill for an upgrade they never asked for. 
A group of North Fayette Township (Allegheny County, PA) residents who tried to block a Range Resources well pad has lost its appeal — not because a court weighed their evidence, but because they live too far away to sue. The Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court ruled August 25 that Stephen Bates and Heather Forster, who share an address more than two miles from the proposed pad, lack “standing” — the legal right to bring a case — to challenge the township’s approval in court. 
South Carolina’s utility regulators voted unanimously yesterday to let a $2.8 billion artificial intelligence data center in Spartanburg County build and run its own 457-megawatt natural gas power plant without asking the state’s permission first. The decision is a big win for the “behind-the-meter” model — where a data center brings its own generation instead of leaning on the grid — and it’s a model that is going to burn a lot of molecules. Possibly some of ours. 
A federal appeals court has handed XTO Energy (ExxonMobil’s shale subsidiary) a win in a long-running Western Pennsylvania royalty lawsuit, ruling Monday that XTO did NOT give up its right to push some landowners into private arbitration — even though it spent 55 months litigating the case before it asked. The case is Salvatora v. XTO Energy Inc., a cousin of the Kriley case MDN has also followed. Same defendant, same Pittsburgh courthouse, same plaintiffs’ firm, same complaint: landowners say XTO shaved too much off their royalty checks for “post-production costs” — the gathering, compression, and processing charges that move gas from the wellhead to a buyer. 
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit last Friday slammed the door on Big Green’s attempt to yank the New York water permit for the Williams/Transco Northeast Supply Enhancement (NESE) pipeline. Six environmental groups asked the court to vacate the Clean Water Act Section 401 water quality certification (WQC) that the New York State Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) issued in November 2025. In a summary order issued Aug. 21, a three-judge panel said no. The permit stands. NESE, already under construction, keeps building. 
In March, MDN told you that Butler County landowners were appealing after a federal judge tossed their royalty class action against XTO Energy (see 
One of the biggest landowner-vs.-driller cases in Ohio shale history just ended — with no verdict, no dollar figure, and a two-page piece of paper. On July 29, a group of Belmont County mineral owners and Rice Drilling D LLC (owned by EQT) jointly asked a federal judge to throw out the case for good, roughly two months after it was supposed to go in front of a jury. Eight years, 580 docket entries, and one of the most consequential lease questions in the Utica — settled behind closed doors.