US Circuit Court: NY Landowners Released from Marcellus Leases
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, located in New York State, released a decision yesterday in a case known as Beardslee v. Inflection Energy, LLC (copy of the decision is embedded below) that may create problems for future shale drilling in New York State–should the existing statewide ban ever be lifted. Yesterday’s decision is good news for landowners in one sense–it officially upholds the right of Tioga County, NY landowners party to the lawsuit to be released from old leases made in pre-Marcellus days when landowners signed leases for $3 per acre. Those leases were signed before the words “Marcellus” or “Utica” meant anything other than municipalities in New York State. (Interesting factoid: both shale plays are named after the NY towns where they were first identified. Further interesting factoid: both Marcellus, NY and Utica, NY banned fracking before the statewide ban was official.) The Second Circuit upheld a previous decision which we first wrote about in 2012 (see Judge Rules Against Chesapeake, Inflection in NY Lease Case), a decision appealed to NY’s highest court that upheld it (see NY High Court Decision Creates Toxic Environment for O&G Companies). The energy companies then appealed the decision to U.S. District Court, where they have now lost. The ultimate issue at the core of this case is whether or not New York’s government action in disallowing fracking of shale wells should be considered a “force majeure” event that extends a lease beyond the initial term. It is the one issue the none of the courts ever directly answered, including the Second Circuit…
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Some more details about the brilliant move by some average farmers in Tioga County, NY who plan to use propane to frack a Utica Shale well, bypassing the existing ban on fracking in New York because the existing ban only disallows high volume water-based fracking…
Last Friday during the Cabot Oil & Gas quarterly earnings call update with analysts, Cabot’s CEO Dan Dinges provided an important update on the Constitution Pipeline, a 125-mile pipeline that will stretch from the gas fields of Susquehanna County, PA into New York, to Schoharie County. It is a critically needed pipeline to get Cabot’s natural gas in Susquehanna County to markets throughout the northeast and New England. Although Williams is the lead company building the pipeline, Cabot is the other primary partner in the project. Currently the Constitution is 100% FERC authorized and they have 100% of the rights of way leases signed for the project. The only hold-up is the New York State Dept. of Environmental Conservation in granting 401 Water Quality Certificates that allows the Constitution to lay pipe through and under swamps, creeks and other bodies of water. According to Dinges, they expect NY to issue those permits any day now…
An Allegany County, NY attorney quietly filed a lawsuit–two months ago–against the New York Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) over their infamous frack ban. It is the first such lawsuit that we are aware of to be filed against the DEC since the frack ban was officially declared (see 
As MDN noted last Thursday, taking a break from being on break in breathtakingly beautiful Ogunquit, Maine, a group of Tioga County, NY landowners have painted Andrew Cuomo and his Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) in a corner with respect to fracking in the Empire State (see 
Wouldn’t you know? The very day that MDN goes on vacation, a HUGE story–at least for New York State–happens. So we’re back with a single posting today. Yesterday a press conference was held in the Town of Barton (Tioga County), NY to announce that a group of landowners flying under the name of The Snyder Farm Group (five families make up the group) have contracted with Tioga Energy Partners to drill a fracked Utica Shale well, and follow it up with drilling a fracked Marcellus Shale well, using liquefied petroleum gas (LPG or propane) and sand. The wells will not use water for fracking–and therefore, according to the landowners, avoid the ban on high volume fracking recently imposed by Andrew Cuomo and his underling Joe Martens at the state Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC). There is no doubt this is huge news throughout the state–and is giving heartburn to Cuomo and Martens. What cockamamie grounds can the DEC possibly use to refuse it? It’s a brilliant move by the landowners in Tioga County…
A day after issuing the final nail in the coffin of fracking in NY (see 
Let the lawsuits begin! Yesterday the anti-drilling, anti-fossil fuel head of the New York Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC), Joe Martens, did his master’s bidding (his master being Lord Andrew Cuomo, Earl of the Hamptons) by imposing an official, TEMPORARY (not permanent) ban on hydraulic fracturing in the Empire State. The document issued yesterday by Martens is called a Findings Statement (full copy below) and it provides the DEC’s official rationale for the action they are taking in not granting permits for high volume fracking in the state. News coverage is blaring the trumpets that New York has “banned” fracking. Well, yes, in a sense that’s true. But the implication is that it’s a permanent ban–which is not true. Far from it. Martens uses profoundly weak arguments in the Findings Statement to justify his political action. One of his central arguments is what fracking “may” do to water supplies. A few weeks ago the federal EPA, after four years of intense study, found fracking is perfectly safe for water supplies (see