The Second District Court of Appeal issued an unpublished decision in the case Los Padres Forestwatch et al., v. County of Ventura on May 1, 2019, addressing the preparation of an EIR addendum for a 2015 CUP allowing the continued operation of existing oil and gas wells and the addition of new wells. The case […]
San Francisco and Oakland have renewed their fight to try and make Big Oil pay for climate-change related infrastructure damage, asking a federal appeals court earlier this week to reconsider their previously dismissed lawsuits against five oil companies. San Francisco and Oakland argue that a federal judge wrongly kept their cases out of state court […]
President Trump issued two executive orders this past Wednesday that are meant to roll back energy regulations and promote fossil fuel development. In particular, the pair of executive orders are aimed at speeding up the permitting process for oil and gas infrastructure projects and curbing states’ ability to hold up approvals. Under Section 401 of […]
The below is from the ConocoPhillips Press Release HERE. HOUSTON – ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP) today announced that an international arbitration Tribunal ruled Venezuela unlawfully expropriated ConocoPhillips’ significant oil investments in the Petrozuata and Hamaca heavy crude oil projects and the offshore Corocoro development project. According to an International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) […]
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) recently reported that oil and natural gas lease sales produced more than $1.1 billion in 2018, shattering the previous record of $408 billion in 2008. The revenue was generated by 28 sales amounting to around 1,412 parcels of land and covering about 1.5 million acres. The BLM offers lease […]
Colorado mineral owners filed a federal lawsuit against the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (the “COGCC”) this past Wednesday, asserting that the COGCC’s authority to allow companies to drill on objecting residents’ land is unconstitutional. Colorado Rising, the activist group backing the lawsuit, recently suffered defeat of its November ballot measure that would have […]
This week, Rocky Mountain Wild, the Center for Biological Justice, and other groups filed suit against the Bureau of Land Management (“BLM”) asking the court to cancel three recent oil and gas lease sales in Utah and Colorado. The plaintiff environmental groups argued that the BLM violated the National Environmental Policy Act by failing to […]
A federal judge for the D.C. Circuit reinstated two oil and gas leases on Monday, in an area of Montana deemed sacred to the local Blackfeet Tribe. (W.A. Moncrief, Jr. v. U.S. Dep’t of interior (Sept. 24, 2018) D.C. Circuit Civil Case No. 17-609 and Solenex LLC v. Sally Jewell et al. (Sept. 24, 2018) […]
On September 11th the U.S. EPA released a proposal that relaxes requirements for how energy companies monitor and repair methane leaks. This proposal is among the many proposed rollbacks of Obama-era regulations. The draft proposal has not yet been published in the Federal Register. Under the proposal, companies would perform a leak inspection at least […]
This month, the Trump administration moved forward with a plan to unravel aggressive federal emissions and fuel economy standards. The EPA and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released a joint statement Thursday unveiling their plan to replace those standards with something much more lax. Automakers have argued since the passage of the more stringent standards […]
