“In response to a court deadline,” the EPA yesterday finalized the long-awaited (and long-dreaded, by some) rules that aim to reduce air pollution from the oil and natural gas industry, including setting “the first federal air standards” for natural gas wells that are hydraulic fractured. According to the EPA, these rules are expected “to yield [...]
Archive for the ‘Natural Gas’ Category
29 Mar
All of the Above? NRDC Wants None of It
Quick on the heels of an upbeat Department of the Interior Press Release came an equal-and-opposite reaction from the National Resources Defense Council. The commentary focused on a recently released Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement from DOI’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management that evaluates potential significant environmental effects of multiple geological and geophysical “G&G” activities in [...]
9 Mar
Back to the Drawing Well: EPA Calls for Further Sampling of Pavillion, WY Monitoring Wells
In December 2011 came the controversial draft report on ground water contamination near Pavillion, Wyoming. Responding to complaints of “objectionable taste and odor problems” in area well water, the EPA launched an investigation of Pavillion’s water quality. Many of the town’s private wells overlie the Pavillion gas field, on which 169 production wells extract gas [...]
15 Nov
One Shale Gas Report, Two Different Takes
On November 10th, the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board Natural Gas Subcommittee released its second and final report on the steps that can be taken to improve the safety and reduce the environmental impact of shale gas development. The report lays out 20 recommendations that it believes “would assure that the nation’s considerable shale gas [...]
10 Nov
FERC Requests Comments on Environmental Guidelines for Pipeline Construction
FERC may have said it first, but Hogan Lovells said it louder. Or, at least, that’s who I was listening to more closely. A recently Energy Alert from Hogan Lovells announced FERC’s intent to update two environmental guidance documents that dictate, in Hogan Lovells’ words, “baseline environmental mitigation measures the Commission requires for pipeline certificate [...]
4 Oct
Marcellus Minerals: Is Marcellus Shale Gas a “Mineral” for the Purposes of Pennsylvania’s Dunham Rule?
Two recent law firm memos (from Fulbright & Jaworski and Pepper Hamilton) tackled the subject when they covered a September 7th decision from the Pennsylvania Superior Court in Butler v. Powers. The “Dunham Rule” refers to an assumption in Pennsylvania law, wherein a reservation or exception for “minerals” in a deed or lease that does [...]
8 Sep
Public Company Disclosure of Fracking Activities
A recent article from Andrews Kurth suggests that the SEC may be paying extra special attention to disclosure relating to hydraulic fracturing in EDGAR filings. According to Andrews Kurth, the SEC staff has recently issued comment letters “seeking detailed disclosures regarding hydraulic fracturing and shale industry risks and the amount and specific nature of the [...]
28 Jun
Proving Natural Gas Reserves
A piece that ran in the New York Times this weekend covered some juicy leaked industry emails and internal documents that called into question the productivity and profitability of natural gas wells. One focus of the article was public company forecasts of gas reserves as a metric for a company’s value. Covered by all the [...]
16 May
Last Week in Environmental Contingencies and Proceedings Disclosure – Oil and Gas Extraction Industry Edition!
As we’ve posted in the past, public companies must generally disclose material legal proceedings in their annual and quarterly reports to the SEC. Today we’ve pulled some disclosures of environmental liabilities from companies in the Oil and Gas Extraction Industry. We did this by limiting our search on the knowledgemosaic SEC filings page to the [...]
12 Apr
To Frack or Not To Frack?
Hydraulic fracturing has received a lot of press since we originally reported on it (here and here), but probably nothing compared to the debate going forward. On Sunday, April 10th, The Hill’s E2-Wire released a pre-publication version of a study from Cornell University concluding that natural gas obtained via “fracking” could be even worse for [...]
