XTO Criminal Trial for Accident Spill in PA Delayed Until 2016
Not long after she took office, Pennsylvania’s Democrat Attorney General, Kathleen Kane, brought criminal charges against XTO Energy for an accidental spill in Lycoming County, PA that happened two years before she was in office (see PA AG Abuses Her Authority, Files Criminal Charges Against XTO). Kane herself will likely soon be forcibly removed from office because she lied under oath, a criminal offense called perjury, and has now lost her license to practice law (see End is Near: PA AG Kane’s Law License Suspended by Supreme Court). The last we heard anything about Kane’s sham case against XTO is that Democrat Lycoming County Judge Marc Lovecchio refused to dismiss the charges against XTO in April (see Democrat County Judge Rules PA AG’s Case Against XTO Can Proceed). We have a development to report. XTO has been trying to work out a deal with the AG’s office to make this asinine criminal charge go away. You can be sure it involves lots of money (a government shakedown of XTO). So XTO has filed a continuance request, pushing the trial off until 2016. The judge granted the request because XTO says “meaningful discussion$” have been held, which means a trial may be avoided altogether…
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A major defeat for Pennsylvania’s anti-drilling groups, including THE Delaware Riverkeeper, was just handed down by the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court in a Lycoming County zoning case. In Gorsline v. Board of Supervisors of Fairfield Township, anti-drilling neighbors, including Brian and Dawn Gorsline, Paul and Michele Batkowski and others (collectively “Gorsline”) sued to stop a conditional use permit granted by Fairfield Township to allow Inflection Energy to construct a well pad on the property of Donald and Eleanor Shaheen. The case was weak, but the lowest court in the PA court system–the Court of Common Pleas (i.e. county court)–said the ninny nanny neighbors had a right to strip away the Shaheen’s property rights to allow drilling on their own property. The PA Commonwealth Court obliterated the faulty reasoning of the lower court and has, significantly, redefined how courts should interpret the results of the Act 13 zoning lawsuit that allows local municipalities the right to restrict shale drilling. The Commonwealth Court decision (full copy below) has kicked the legal legs out from under those seeking to use an amicus brief filed by THE Delaware Riverkeeper in the Act 13 case…
Yesterday the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection announced an agreement/settlement with three Marcellus drillers operating in the northeastern portion of the state. The three–Chesapeake Energy, XTO Energy and SWEPI (i.e. Shell) were fined a collective $374,481 for methane migration related to their drilling activities at three locations (three different counties) in 2011 and 2012. The bad news is that 13 private water wells between the three incidents were negatively affected, along with several local creeks. The good news is that the problems are all fixed. Methane migration is an eminently fixable condition. Here are the details for each fine, including what happened and where it happened…
Yesterday MDN told you about the new, negative tone being set at the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection by its new leader, Sec. John Quigley, by fining Range Resources for a case of methane migration (see 
Last September Range Resources was assessed a then-new record high fine of $4.15 million for a series of leaking frack wastewater impoundments in southwestern Pennsylvania (see