US appeals court clears way for drilling in Pennsylvania national forest
Washington (Platts)--21Sep2011/340 pm EDT/1940 GMT
Owners of mineral rights beneath the Allegheny National Forest in
Pennsylvania and the producers who want to extract that oil and gas do
not have to wait for the US Forest Service to perform an environmental
impact study before drilling, a federal appeals court ruled.
The 3rd US Court of Appeals Tuesday ruling upheld the US District Court
for Western Pennsylvania's decision to issue an injunction barring
Forest Service from applying the environmental impact study requirements
of the National Environmental Policy Act to drilling in the 800-square
mile national forest in northwest Pennsylvania.
The appeals court said the Forest Service should return to its previous
practice of issuing a "notice to proceed" after receiving 60-day notice
from the mineral owner.
The national forest runs south from the New York border in McKean and
Warren counties and ends and Elk County. Neighboring Bradford County to
the east has been a hotbed of drilling activity in the past two years
with producers drilling hundreds of wells to extract the dry gas found
in the northern Pennsylvania portion of the shale play.
In 2009, the Forest Service announced it would apply NEPA to the forest,
a decision that would require a multi-year forest-wide environmental
impact study of potential impacts before drilling operations could
resume. The agency announced its policy as part of a 2009 settlement
reached with environmental groups led by the Sierra Club.
The Pennsylvania Oil & Gas Association, private producer Minard Run Oil
and the county of Warren, Pennsylvania, all sued for a return to
procedures established in 1980 requiring only the 60-day notice to the
Service before drilling began. More than 90% of the subsurface mineral
rights are held by private owners or county governments, rights they
kept when the US government purchased the land establishing the Forest
in 1923.
The appeals court agreed with the lower court in finding that the Forest
Service's NEPA settlement constituted a change in federal policy and the
service had not allowed the mineral rights owners to participate in the
rule-making allowing the change.
The appeals court further said that an injunction stopping the Forest
Service was valid because the mineral owners would suffer irreparable
harm waiting years for the EIS to be done and their case would likely
succeed on its merits.
-- Bill Holland,
bill_holland@platts.com
Creative
Commons License.
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