Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Industrywide Issues | Litigation | Pennsylvania | Regulation | Statewide PA
Radical Green Groups Sue PA to Overturn Well Plugging Law
Last summer, Pennsylvania House Bill (HB) 2644 was passed into law, becoming Act 96 of 2022 (see New PA Act 96 Helps Boost Plugging Orphan Wells – Left Goes Nuts). Part of the new law keeps the power to raise bonding amounts for conventional wells with the legislature rather than allowing PA’s unelected Democrat bureaucrats in the bowels of the DEP’s Environmental Quality Board (EQB) to raise rates to punish drillers. Having their power taken away has pushed the extremists in some of PA’s most radical green groups, including PennFuture, Sierra Club, and Clean Air Council, to file a lawsuit challenging the law.
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Two Marshall County, WV landowners with the same last name (obviously related) sued Southwestern Energy (SWN), accusing the company of “well bashing,” in March of this year (see 
The stench coming from inside the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is growing. Since early this year, Kevin Mooney, an investigative reporter with the PA-based Commonwealth Foundation and D.C.-based Heritage Foundation, has been digging into potential ethics (and legal) violations by FERC commissioners. His work has focused on FERC Commissioner Allison Clements, a former attorney for the radical National Resources Defense Council (see 
In April, the U.S. Supreme Court breathed new life into a long-running lawsuit funded by Big Green groups using (abusing) a small group of uppity Virginia landowners who argue the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) had no right to delegate authority to Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) to use eminent domain to cross land, including the land owned by the small group of uppity landowners in Virginia (see 
And so the end-game, the true insanity, begins. A group of brainwashed children (who are being mentally abused and used by adults, in our humble opinion) won a court case in Montana this week that says Montana state agencies are violating their constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment by allowing fossil fuel development. Yup. No more fossil fuel development in Big Sky Country unless you first obsequiously bow down and worship the GOD of Climate Change first, and pinky-swear promise you won’t emit any carbon dioxide or methane if you drill an oil or gas well. The decision came from an idiot judge who made his ruling while exhaling CO2 (violating his own edict). The judge finds that CO2 is evil. It’s burning up the earth. The new religion of Climate Change was just instituted by judicial fiat for all of Montana. (This would all be hilarious if not so tragic.)
Looks like the three Democrat judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (4th Circuit) value their own jobs more than defeating the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project. On Friday, the three-judge panel that has opposed MVP in just about every decision they’ve issued since 2018 dismissed the remaining two cases against MVP after being overruled by the U.S. Supreme Court two weeks ago (see 
The so-called Center for Climate Integrity (CCI) is behind most of the lawsuits filed by municipalities around the country (cities, counties, states) against Big Oil & Gas companies, claiming fossil energy companies know and have known for years that using their products is toasting Mom Earth into oblivion. It is the most outrageous abuse of the justice system we know of. The lawsuits are instigated (and funded) by CCI and a litany of colluding nonprofits. Get ready in the Keystone State. CCI has partnered up with the Philadelphia-based Clean Air Council (CAC) and, by all appearances, is trying to convince government officials in PA to sue PA energy companies.
There is trouble brewing along the Gulf Coast between Venture Global LNG and its biggest customers: BP, Shell, Edison International (an Italian utility company), Repsol, and GALP Energia (a Portuguese energy company). Venture Global is building the Calcasieu Pass LNG export facility in southwestern Louisiana’s Cameron Parish, less than 50 miles south of Lake Charles. While Venture Global is still working on completing Calcasieu Pass, it has, so far, shipped some 177 cargoes of LNG, much of that during the mega-high prices of last year when the Russia/Ukraine war was at its peak. Yet none of those cargoes went to the facility’s contracted customers, causing trouble.
In 2021 as he was running for the office of Governor in Virginia, Glenn Youngkin pledged if he won, he would remove the state from the onerous carbon tax on coal- and gas-fired power plants called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). Following his recent review of a new regulation to remove the state from RGGI, Youngkin is on the cusp of keeping his promise this year (see 
This is a cautionary tale of choosing your joint venture partner carefully. The Pennsylvania Superior Court threw out a $2.4 million arbitration award against Marcellus driller PennEnergy in a business dispute in a precedential ruling last week. The Superior Court judges overruled an award by an arbitrator. PennEnergy maintained the case should never have been in arbitration in the first place. The intended recipient of the award, MDS Energy, says the Superiors weren’t so superior after all and got it wrong. The case is complicated…
In an act of Supreme justice, the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, John Roberts, issued an order yesterday overturning the stays imposed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (4th Circuit) that were blocking the completion of the 94% done Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP). Let the bulldozers start their engines! We expect work to resume immediately (today) to finish this critical link from the Marcellus/Utica to the Southeastern U.S. The best part is that the decision was announced as the three radicalized leftist judges of the 4th Circuit were hearing arguments that a portion of the Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA) of 2023 forcing the completion of MVP is unconstitutional. Roberts’ order effectively shut down any further shenanigans by these three clowns.
In January 2016, Invenergy announced its intention to build a natural gas-powered electric plant in Elizabeth Township, in Allegheny County, PA (see 
The Weymouth compressor station, online and operating safely since early 2021, was the final piece of the $452 million Atlantic Bridge expansion project that was years in the making. Built by Enbridge, the Weymouth compressor can pump an extra 132,705 Dt/d (132.7 million cubic feet per day) of Marcellus gas through Enbridge’s Algonquin Gas Transmission pipeline from receipt points in New York and New Jersey. The gas is pushed through the mainline all the way to Maine and (potentially) Nova Scotia, Canada. The radical environmental left (which hates all fossil fuels) has been fighting this compressor station for years. On Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia (D.C. Circuit) dismissed two remaining petitions against the project.