The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit is rejecting a push by the federal government and the oil sector to rehear a panel ruling allowing cities’ climate nuisance cases to proceed in state court, echoing the court’s decision from a week ago that also rejected calls to reconsider its ruling in a separate nuisance suit.
The final rule is expected to drop direct methane standards for new oil and gas equipment, and officials are poised to unveil the measure as early as this week.
The first state compliance plan under EPA’s Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) climate rule for existing power plants is expected “soon,” according to the agency’s de facto air chief, who described it as a chance for her office to demonstrate how it will work with states to implement the rule.
A group of 31 House Democratic and GOP members of the Congressional Biofuels Caucus is urging inclusion of direct payments to ethanol producers in any new COVID-19 economic relief bill.
EPA is defending its right to enforce federal air toxics regulations against a Utah gas services company in an Environmental Appeals Board (EAB) dispute testing the limits of an earlier consent decree that the company claims shields certain equipment from agency air rules, a case that may set a precedent for similar decrees.
Opponents of natural gas infrastructure projects are pursuing new legal arguments seeking to overturn their approvals by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), including by challenging regulators’ decision that developers have shown the projects are “needed” in the market.
As legal experts are debating the implications of a major court ruling upending the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) use of “tolling orders” to delay administration rehearing of gas infrastructure approvals, the commission secured more time to decide whether to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court.
Environmentalists are downplaying the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit’s recent decision that said they must demonstrate harm from each alleged Clean Air Act violation in a multi-pronged air suit, saying the decision merely sets out a roadmap for litigating complex cases rather than tightening the court’s overall standing test.
A lower court had ordered the Dakota Access pipeline to shut down and be drained of oil due to a flawed National Environmental Policy Act review of the project.
The Army Corps of Engineers is proposing numerous changes to the dredge-and-fill nationwide permit (NWP) program aimed at speeding regulatory approval of various projects, while GOP senators are pushing legislation aimed at further shortening the approval process by waiving Endangered Species Act (ESA) programmatic review mandates.
