OH Law Firm Asks FERC to Stop ET Rover Pipeline Eminent Domain
Columbus, OH law firm has filed a motion with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) challenging Energy Transfer Partners’ ET Rover application before FERC. The issue at the heart of the motion is to prevent ET Rover from invoking eminent domain and steamrollering over landowners, building the pipeline without an agreement in place with each individual landowner first. When pipeline companies have the power of eminent domain, they hold all the cards. They can say, “Here’s the offer–take it or leave it–and if you leave it, we’ll build the pipeline through your land anyway at the price we want.” We’ve never been fans of eminent domain for pipelines. Far better for pipeline companies to work it out with landowners and pay them–or reroute it through someone else’s property who will play ball. We acknowledge it’s a thorny issue and not completely black and white. ET Rover is an 830-mile, $4.4 billion pipeline that will flow Marcellus and Utica Shale gas from PA, WV and eastern OH through OH into Michigan and eventually into Canada (see ET Rover Pipeline’s 800-Mile Journey Begins with FERC Filing). The bulk of the pipeline will run diagonally from southeast to northwest across Ohio. Just yesterday we told you about ET Rover’s program to help landowners (see ET Rover Pipeline Hires Land Stewards to Protect the Land in OH). The motion filed with FERC, from what we can tell in reading the press release and the motion itself (embedded below) is not an attempt to stop ET Rover–it’s an attempt to give landowners more negotiating power and leave them firmly in control of whether, and how much, they will accept to allow the pipeline through their property…
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A cool new online tool has just been released for landowners (and nosy neighbors) who want to calculate estimated royalties for any individual Utica Shale well in Ohio–with a reasonably high degree of accuracy. The tool is called the Ohio Shale Well Royalty Calculator and was created by WellRev Ohio LLC–a Canton, OH company that specializes in assisting county auditors, school districts and local governments calculate tax revenue from oil and gas wells. Below is a link to the new calculator along with MDN’s brief instruction guide for how to use it…
It’s been a while since we’ve “run the numbers” on the Utica Shale. As of February 21st, there have been a total of 1,824 Utica permits issued. Of that, 816 are currently online and producing. Below we share the numbers, including the top 10 counties by number of permits, and the top 10 companies by number of permits…
There’s a stark difference between pro-drillers and anti-drillers. Take pro-drillers in New York State as an example. NY landowners have had their property rights stripped away by a lawless (and spineless) governor–Andy Cuomo. Yet NY landowners soldier on. When the state’s highest court handed them an unfair and crushing blow by allowing municipalities to ban drilling, they continued to make their case and use whatever means they can–within the law–to advance their cause. NY landowners hate the fact that Cuomo and the courts have bastardized the law in the Empire State, but they continue to recognize the rule of law and abide by it. They are good citizens. Let’s contrast that with anti-drillers–say those in Ohio. When a court decision goes against anti-drillers, like the recent OH Supreme Court ruling (see 
Cases before the high courts of both New York and Pennsylvania in the past year have ruled that local municipalities can control oil and gas drilling within their borders–so-called “home rule” statutes. In the case of NY the high court went berserk and said towns can actually ban such drilling, which of course strips away private property rights guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution. In PA it was a little better, but not much. PA’s high court gutted provisions in the state’s Act 13 law making for a crazy-quilt patchwork of local zoning regulations that PA’s drillers must now navigate through. One state’s high court, however, has gotten it right. Yesterday the Ohio Supreme Court issued its long awaited ruling in the Munroe Falls v Beck Energy case (for background, see 
The only question that remains (for us) about Ohio Gov. John Kasich is this: When does he plan to change the (R) after his name to a (D)? He is, in almost all respects, a liberal Democrat at this point. What other conclusion can you draw after he made this statement last week when referring to oil and gas drillers and the incredibly high severance tax he’s proposing: “Every time you take valuable things out of the ground you make us poorer.” This is a typical Democrat class warfare argument he’s using to justify his high tax proposal (see