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Fed Court Strongly Rebukes Riverkeeper for Harassing ME2 Pipe
A federal court in Pennsylvania has just verbally slapped down THE Delaware Riverkeeper–both the umbrella Riverkeeper organization and (by name) the person who claims to be THE riverkeeper of the Delaware, Maya van Rossum, for a transparent and pathetic attempt at blocking the Mariner East 2 pipeline project with yet another frivolous lawsuit. In the decision, the judge says the litigation tactics of the Riverkeeper organization “do nothing to protect the environment.” The judge also said to impose liability against ME2 in this case “would offend basic principles of fairness and effect an absurd result” and “violate due process.” Ouch.
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We see a very positive sign that the U.S. Supreme Court is potentially interested in accepting and ruling on a case of tremendous importance to the oil and gas industry. The case is PennEast Pipeline v State of New Jersey. NJ is attempting to block the PennEast project by denying it access to run across tracts of land either owned or controlled by the state, claiming federal eminent domain authority does not apply to state-owned land. NJ won the case in lower courts and PennEast appealed it all the way to the Supremes, who have now taken an active interest. No, they haven’t officially accepted the case…yet. But they have just signaled a strong interest.
Last year MDN told you about New Jersey-based Omni Energy Group and their application to build two new injection wells in Belmont County, OH near St. Clairsville (see 
In February Williams official gave up on building a long-delayed project to flow natural gas from northeastern Pennsylvania into central New York, called the Constitution Pipeline (see 
Although it seems counterintuitive to say this, maybe NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo and his legion of radicalized Democrats have done New York landowners a favor with a permanent ban on fracking, passed as part of the most recent state budget (see 
In 2015 a group of Ohio landowners did what landowners had previously done in Pennsylvania, Texas and elsewhere–they filed a proposed class-action lawsuit against Chesapeake Energy claiming Chessy had screwed them and about 1,000 other Ohio landowners out of a collective $30 million in royalty payments (see 
This is truly disappointing. A few weeks ago we told you that Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court ruled a long-running lawsuit involving Grant Township (Indiana County, PA) will continue on through the court system (see 
The Energy Equipment and Infrastructure Alliance (EEIA), a non-profit representing people and businesses who work in the energy infrastructure supply chain, filed an “amicus curiae” (friend of the court) brief in support of PennEast Pipeline’s request to get the U.S. Supreme Court. PennEast has asked the Supremes to overturn a lower court decision that allows states like New Jersey to usurp federal authority by blocking PennEast, a FERC-approved pipeline.
If there’s a silver lining in this tragic COVID-19 coronavirus crisis, this may be it: Radicals who want to deny everyone the right to use fossil fuels with their unending campaigns of protests and legal actions are pretty much stopped in their tracks. They can no longer make mischief to block pipelines and shale drilling and the use of natural gas by ordinary citizens (via municipal bans). The virus has stopped most court cases, public hearings, and even the right to assemble and protest. Antis are apoplectic and scared that pipeline and drilling projects will get approved and move forward because antis can’t bully public officials and courts into bending to their twisted anti-fossil fuel views.
Before Lord Obama and the EPA Obamadroids left office, they inflicted a great deal of damage to this country via onerous and outrageous new regulations. When President Trump took office, he immediately began to roll back and rightsize regulations at the EPA (and elsewhere), scaling back overregulation to common-sense regulation. We’re talking about regs like the horrible so-called Clean Power Plan. The Obamadroids and Big Green lobby (one and the same, with gobs of money) have litigated Trump’s efforts to restore sanity to EPA regulations every square centimeter of the way.
In a disappointing decision, Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court recently ruled a long-running lawsuit filed against Grant Township (Indiana County, PA) will continue on through the court system. For the past several years we’ve reported on the case of Grant Township, a town that passed an ordinance cooked up by the radical Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) to try and block a state-approved injection well. Part of the ordinance was tossed. However, Commonwealth Court has decided the town can continue to try and make a case that it should be able to override state law with its home-cooked regulations because by doing so they will somehow protect citizens’ health, which the town says is allowed under PA’s poorly-written Environmental Rights Amendment (ERA).
The 600-mile Dominion Energy Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) project has completed about 35 miles of the project and that’s it. Why? Lawsuits, brought by Big Green groups. The biggest challenge the project faces is a lawsuit that ruled ACP could not cross under the Appalachian Trail. Dominion appealed the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court where it now sits. By all accounts, the recent oral arguments before the Supremes went well for ACP (see 
Last week MDN brought you news (from the Associated Press) that Cabot Oil & Gas had “abandoned” negotiations to settle a lawsuit they brought against attorneys who had sued Cabot for something already settled in a previous lawsuit (see