Last week, the 9th Circuit voted against rehearing en banc its decision from last April finding the City of Berkeley’s ban on natural gas connections in new construction to be preempted by the Energy Policy and Conservation...more
Late last month, in Munoz v. Intercontinental Terminals Company, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals held that the liability provisions of CERCLA and the Oil Pollution Act do not overlap and that, consequently, where oil and...more
Last week, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals again rejected a FERC NEPA review for failure to assess the climate impacts resulting from the downstream use of natural gas supplied by a gas pipeline upgrade project...more
An article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (login required) has documented the devastating impact caused by the use of leaded gasoline. The study estimates that more than half of Americans alive in...more
EPA has proposed to revoke the Trump administration finding in 2020 that it is not appropriate and necessary to regulate emissions of air toxics from coal- and oil-fired electric generating units. Instead, EPA proposes to...more
As climate change rightly has dominated recent discussions of environmental policy, it’s been easy to forget how much progress has been made in the past fifty years. I was reminded of the extent of that progress by the story...more
According to E&E News (subscription required), FERC yesterday, for the first time, assessed the impacts of a gas pipeline’s downstream GHG emissions. (As of this writing, the decision is not yet available on FERC’s web...more
Last week, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals affirmed vacatur of the easement issued to the Dakota Access Pipeline by the Army Corps of Engineers. As I noted last month in connection with the Biden Executive Order...more
2/4/2021
/ Appeals ,
Biden Administration ,
Dakota Access Pipeline ,
Energy Sector ,
Environmental Impact Statements ,
Executive Orders ,
NEPA ,
New Legislation ,
Oil & Gas ,
Pipelines ,
US Army Corps of Engineers
Everyone noticed when President Trump issued an order earlier this month banning offshore oil and gas drilling in certain areas until 2032. It was obvious to everyone that this was a campaign stunt, intended to improve his...more
Last week, EPA finalized its rollback of Obama administration regulations governing methane emissions from the oil and gas industry. The move is not exactly a surprise. Regarding the purpose of the rollback, I stand by my...more
On Wednesday, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals stayed the injunction requiring the shutdown of the Dakota Access Pipeline. It’s a victory for the operator, Energy Transfer LP, simply because it lives to fight another day. ...more
Yesterday, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals refused the appellants’ request for a partial stay of the injunction recently issued against use of the Army Corps Nationwide Permit 12 for oil and gas pipeline projects...more
Earlier this month, I reported on a study showing that methane emissions from Permian Basin fracking operations were quite high. Since that study acknowledged that there are reasons to think that methane emissions from the...more
Last week, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the District Court decision remanding Baltimore’s climate change litigation to state court. I wouldn’t read too much into the decision, which is founded on the niceties of...more
On December 17, 2019, I noted with enthusiasm the announcement that the states participating in the Transportation and Climate Initiative had released a new draft Memorandum of Understanding outlining the framework of what...more
The 12 states and the District of Columbia participating in the Transportation and Climate Initiative announced yesterday the release of a new draft Memorandum of Understanding that outlines the framework of what they are...more
12/18/2019
/ Carbon Emissions ,
Climate Change ,
Energy Sector ,
Environmental Policies ,
Fees ,
Greenhouse Gas Emissions ,
Memorandum of Understanding ,
Motor Vehicles ,
Oil & Gas ,
Transportation Industry ,
Wholesale
Last week, BioScience published the “World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency.” It’s actually a nice piece of work – short, readable, to the point. In barely 4 pages, it concisely summarizes the fine mess we’ve gotten...more
Last week, EPA proposed to eliminate regulation of methane emissions from the oil and gas industry. The most noteworthy response to the proposal came from the large producers. ExxonMobil, Shell, and BP all oppose the...more
Earlier this week, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals partially reversed a district court decision, and ordered the Bureau of Land Management to vacate the NEPA approvals and permits it had issued authorizing the drilling of a...more
5/13/2019
/ Appeals ,
Bureau of Land Management ,
Energy Sector ,
Federal Land ,
Fracking ,
NEPA ,
NHPA ,
Oil & Gas ,
Reversal ,
Vacated ,
Well Drilling
After receiving an analysis showing that shutting the Jim Bridger and Naughton coal-fired electric generating plants in Wyoming would save ratepayers money, PacificCorp, the owner of the plants, announced that it would shut...more
I don’t work in the oil and gas industry. This lede from Bloomberg Environment may not be news to anyone in the industry, but it absolutely blew me away...more
Boston’s Green Ribbon Commission has just released Carbon Free Boston, which outlines a pathway to a carbon-free city by 2050. It’s a thoughtful and careful report. My immediate reaction was two-fold. Of course we have to do...more
1/30/2019
/ Carbon Emissions ,
Clean Energy ,
Climate Change ,
Electric Vehicles ,
Energy Reform ,
Energy Sector ,
Global Warming ,
Green Buildings ,
Green Energy ,
Greenhouse Gas Emissions ,
Innovation ,
Landfills ,
Oil & Gas ,
Renewable Energy ,
Transportation Industry
On November 8, 2018, Judge Brian Morris granted summary judgment to plaintiffs on some of their claims challenging the State Department’s new Record of Decision for the Keystone XL project. Whatever our Tweeter-in-chief may...more
On Friday, August 24, 2018, Judge John Woodcock held that an ordinance enacted by the City of South Portland, Maine, that prohibited loading crude oil from a pipeline terminating in South Portland onto tankers in South...more
On Monday, June 25, 2018, Judge William Alsup dismissed the public nuisance case brought by the City of Oakland and the State of California against five major oil companies. The suit sought payment of damages into a fund to...more