The Supreme Court of Wyoming reversed and remanded a lower court decision affirming the Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission's denial of a request for public records documenting the identities of chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing operations in the state. Below, the environmental groups t...

A Maryland appellate court held that a liquid natural gas (LNG) shipping terminal may export natural gas from its facility on the Chesapeake Bay. In 2005, the terminal entered into an agreement with an environmental group that set forth activities that would be authorized or restricted at the site. ...

A Michigan appellate court held that Mich. Admin. Rule 324.102(x), which defines the term “injection well,” does not include wells completed using hydraulic fracturing. Accordingly, "frack" wells are not subject to the environmental regulations applicable to injection wells. For a well to be cat...

A district court held that a Nebraska law passed in 2012 to expedite the approval of a new route for the controversial Keystone XL pipeline through the state is unconstitutional. Article IV, §20, of the Nebraska Constitution commits exclusively to the Nebraska Public Service Commission (PSC) the au...

A California court dismissed environmental groups' lawsuit against the California Department of Conservation, Division Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR) for failing to comply with the California Environmental Quality Act in issuing permits for oil and gas wells that involve hydraulic fractur...

The D.C. Circuit denied petitions for review challenging FAA's determination that a proposed offshore wind farm in Nantucket Sound would not pose a hazard to air navigation. Despite petitioners' arguments to the contrary, the FAA's no hazard determinations were consistent with the agency's handbook ...

Pennsylvania's highest court struck down Act 13, which pertains to oil and gas operations in the Marcellus Shale, as unconstitutional. The Act repealed Pennsylvania’s Oil and Gas Act and replaced it with a codified statutory framework regulating oil and gas operations in the Commonwealth. Among ot...

The Second Circuit held that it lacks jurisdiction to review an electric company's suit challenging the constitutionality of Vermont's Electrical Energy Generating Tax. The company owns a nuclear power plant that is the sole entity taxed under the scheme, which imposes a charge on electricity produc...

The D.C. Circuit vacated a FERC decision allowing a power company to use a regional transmission organization's (RTO's) transmission lines in order to join another RTO network. The two RTOs involved in this case had entered a joint operating agreement that allowed both RTOs to use the other's transm...

A district court dismissed a complaint challenging DOI's approval of the Ocotillo Wind Energy Facility Project, a utility-scale wind power project in the Sonoran Desert in Imperial County, California, under NEPA and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA). The purpose and need statement set forth in BL...