WV Appeals Lawsuit re Forced Pooling Law to Higher Fed Court
Another twist in the effort to overturn a bill passed earlier this year by the West Virginia legislature, Senate Bill (SB) 694, which finally brings forced pooling for shale wells to the Mountain States after eight years of trying (see WV House Passes Forced Pooling Bill, Done Deal When Gov Signs). Earlier this month, a lawsuit brought by two West Virginia landowners seeking to overturn the state’s new forced pooling (i.e. unitization) law was put on pause by a federal judge (see WV Landowner Lawsuit to Block Forced Pooling Law Dealt Another Blow). The federal judge said the lawsuit belongs in state court. West Virginia officials disagree and have appealed his ruling to the next rung up the federal court ladder.
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It took us a while to track down this story, but we finally have details about the settlement of a class action lawsuit brought by roughly 60 landowners in Fayette County, PA, against Chief Exploration and Development, the former drilling arm of Chief Oil & Gas (now called Cyprus Exploration and Development). The lawsuit alleged that in 2008, Chief and its landman had cut a deal to lease the landowners’ property and then never paid the stipulated signing bonus. The lawsuit sought $7 million. The landowners ended up settling for $5.5 million earlier this month.
In August, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro (a confirmed shale energy hater who becomes Governor on Jan. 1), announced that he had finally bullied Energy Transfer into pleading “no contest” (meaning they don’t admit to a darned thing) in a so-called criminal case against the company for a series of accidents affecting construction for both the Revolution and Mariner East pipelines (see 
A lawsuit brought by two West Virginia landowners seeking to overturn the state’s newly enacted forced pooling (i.e. unitization) law was put on pause by a federal judge on Dec. 1. The same two landowners had a previous version of the same lawsuit tossed by the judge back in September (see 
Yesterday MDN brought you the news that as of Friday, a new regulation controlling volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions, and by extension methane emissions, for Pennsylvania’s conventional oil and gas drillers went into effect (see 
Just last week, we told you that a West Virginia Circuit Court judge who allegedly waved and pointed a gun at an attorney for EQT Corporation during a hearing about a case brought against EQT by landowners for improper deductions of post-production expenses from their royalty payments had resigned (see 
The partisan bully Josh Shapiro, far-left Attorney General in Pennsylvania (who is becoming Governor on Jan. 1, to PA’s shame), has claimed victory in converting what was at best an accident into a crime against Coterra Energy (née Cabot Oil & Gas). Yesterday in a courtroom in Susquehanna County, PA, Coterra plead “no contest” to a single misdemeanor charge Shapiro ginned up against the company over stray methane in a few water wells in Dimock, PA going back 14 years. It is a horrible miscarriage of justice. We wouldn’t blame Coterra if they NEVER drill another well in the state.
Two separate but related cases concerning Pennsylvania’s entrance into the interstate carbon cap-and-trade program known as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), which we call a carbon tax, had their day in court yesterday. Judges from PA’s typically conservative Commonwealth Court heard oral arguments and, according to leftists, zeroed in on the issue of whether the so-called RGGI “fee” assessed by the Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) is really a fee, or instead is really a tax. It makes a difference. The DEP can, constitutionally, assess a fee, but it cannot unilaterally slap a new tax on coal- and natural gas-fired power plants (as it is trying to do).
Several lawsuits have been filed against the Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf administration in its attempt to force the state to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) carbon tax program, including a lawsuit by the state legislature. In July, three gas-fired power plant operators–Calpine Corporation, Tenaska Westmoreland Management, and Fairless Energy–filed a lawsuit against the state Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) and its Environmental Quality Board (EQB) opposing its attempt (under orders from Wolf) to force the state into RGGI carbon tax auctions. That lawsuit has some rather illuminating charges–like the claim that moving to RGGI will result in HIGHER, not lower, emissions from power plants.
Pennsylvania State Senator Katie Muth’s attempt to block a proposed frack wastewater treatment plant in Dimock (hours away from her own district) has completely bombed out. Muth tried to challenge and block a permit for the plant, an effort which was mostly rejected in court back in June (see 
The Catholic nuns of Lancaster County’s Adorers of the Blood of Christ are still, all these years later, trying to shake down Williams for more money because of a pipeline that runs underneath a cornfield owned by the sisters (hence our nickname for them). Using lawyers from Big Green groups, the nuns argued their “religious beliefs” were offended by the pipeline because it flows a nasty, filthy fossil fuel that causes global warming. We’ve lost track of how many lawsuits the sisters have filed, using OPM (other people’s money). The most recent lawsuit, filed in the Philadelphia-based U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals, was just shot down by the court.