PA Senate Won’t Consider Energy Bills Until RGGI Carbon Tax Decided
According to the left-wing-funded (very partisan) Spotlight PA publication, a group of bills aimed at boosting electricity production and regulating clean energy has “rare, bipartisan support” in Pennsylvania’s divided legislature. We doubt that. More like a few RINOs are joining Democrats to support a few bills. Regardless of whether there is consensus between the two parties on these energy bills, they aren’t going anywhere in the PA Senate unless and until the state Supreme Court (loaded with Democrats) renders a decision on the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) carbon tax scheme. So says the PA Senate Majority Leader, Joe Pittman (Republican from Indiana). Read More “PA Senate Won’t Consider Energy Bills Until RGGI Carbon Tax Decided”
Two conventional oil producers in Southeast Ohio say dozens of their wells have been flooded with industrial waste (brine) from the fracking industry. They claim that nearby injection wells that handle frack waste/brine are leaking. State regulators agree that injection wells, at least at some locations, are leaking. Not only have these leaks (if true) affected oil wells, but there’s a concern they may be contaminating area water wells. 
Alice, get ready to go down the rabbit hole into litigation Wonderland. This post is about a Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision issued on May 30, 2025. In the case Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Game Commission v. Thomas E. Proctor Heirs Trust, the PA Supremes addressed a question from the Third Circuit Court of Appeals regarding whether a 1908 tax sale of an “unseated” (undeveloped) parcel of land, the Haines Warrant, constituted a “title wash” that divested the subsurface estate owners of their ownership interest. We think the case has broader implications for landowners and drillers with respect to who owns mineral rights that have been separated from surface rights. 
Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that federal agencies conducting environmental reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) must consider only the direct effects of a project rather than its broader impacts. The 8-0 ruling (highly unusual for a unanimous decision) follows years of lower courts demanding broader consideration of the effects of projects like LNG export terminals and energy-moving projects, such as rail lines and pipelines, to account for the climate effects of fossil fuels that move through them and will later be burned. 
Rover Pipeline, a 713-mile natural gas pipeline, was designed to carry up to 3.25 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) of Marcellus and Utica gas from Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio to destinations in Ohio, Michigan, West Virginia, and Canada. The project was completed and came online in late 2018 (see 
Columbia Gas Transmission LLC won its bid for a quick win against Ohio landowners in Hocking County, Ohio, who claimed the company breached certain agreements when deciding to plug a gas well. A federal judge granted summary judgment to Columbia because the landowners failed to show how the company didn’t follow its responsibilities outlined in the relevant lease. We have a copy of the full decision and a summary of it below. 
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 
In December 2022, the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (BPU) approved permission for New Jersey Natural Gas (NJNG) to build a pipeline regulator station in Holmdel, New Jersey. What does a regulator station do? It reduces pressure on the existing underground natural gas pipelines in the area, which run underneath Holmdel Township and throughout Monmouth County. Ultimately, a regulator station will ensure the reliability of the pipelines and the gas that flows in the area. The new station will replace a currently operating temporary regulator station. Yet the “leaders” of Holmdel voted in 2023 to appeal the BPU decision to court, allocating up to $20,000 of taxpayer money for legal fees, which turned out to be a fruitless attempt at overturning the BPU decision (see 
Local municipalities with radical political leaders, along with some “blue” states run by radical Democrats, have attempted to strip away the right of their citizens to freely choose which energy source they want to use. It’s about as anti-American as it gets, against the very founding of this country. Yet it happens. Berkeley, California’s “first-in-the-nation” natural gas ban was later overturned by a federal appeals court. Yet recently, two other appeals court cases have ruled in favor of gas-banning municipalities and states. Let’s consider the “shifting landscape” of local and state gas bans… 
This is news of a lawsuit with implications for drillers, rights owners, and surface land owners that we were not previously aware of. EOG Resources, an oil and gas drilling giant with nearly half a million leased acres in Ohio, holds drilling rights on land owned by Lucky Land Management in Ohio—we could not determine the exact location or county. The two sides couldn’t agree on whether EOG’s rights to drill included the right to drill from Lucky Land’s surface out to adjacent properties as well. So EOG sued. EOG then asked a district court to grant a preliminary injunction, allowing the company to access the land to cut down trees and begin constructing wells. The district court did so, finding that EOG would probably succeed on the merits of the case. 
Yesterday, the Ohio Supreme Court issued a ruling dismissing a case that leaves in place a ruling from the Seventh District Court of Appeals. The case, Darrell Crozier et al. v. Pipe Creek Conservancy LLC et al., involves a decision on who owns the oil and gas rights underlying a property in rural Belmont County. The case revolves around the Ohio Marketable Title Act (MTA), something we’ve written about multiple times (