ELR Citation: 53 ELR 20005
No(s). 22-809-SDD-RLB (M.D. La. Dec 26, 2022) (Dick, J.)

A district court granted a company's motion to preliminarily enjoin a Louisiana parish from enforcing a 12-month moratorium on activities related to well drilling on parish land. The company moved for an injunction prohibiting enforcement of the moratorium insofar as it banned seismic surveys, Class V injection wells, and associated activities related to the company's proposed carbon sequestration facility. The parish moved to dismiss, but the court found the company had sufficiently pleaded actual and imminent injury occasioned by the moratorium and that enforcement action against it was imminent. As to the motion for preliminary injunction, the court concluded that the state of Louisiana had circumscribed the moratorium by undertaking to allow underground injection control (UIC) wells through its UIC program, and thus that the moratorium was preempted insofar as it encroached on the field of UIC and attempted to regulate the drilling of Class V test wells and other wells used for long-term storage of carbon dioxide; the ban on seismic surveying was also preempted because it related to the underlying ban on in-county injection wells. The court denied the motion to dismiss, and granted the company's motion for preliminary injunction.