Energy Legal Blog

At a recent energy industry forum, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar left few clues as to what the Administration would decide regarding the Department’s Five-Year Leasing Program for 2007-2012 and the draft  2010-2015 plan proposed by the outgoing Bush Administration that would greatly expand offshore leasing for oil and gas exploration and production. As Salazar put it, “We’ll try to bring all those together in the next – very soon.” (more…)

PR News announced that Bracewell & Giuliani’s Energy Legal Blog will be recognized as the best “Legal PR Blog” at its annual Corporate Social Responsibility & Legal Awards Luncheon on February 24, 2010 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. This award recognizes an outstanding and influential law-related weblog or online journal written by a representative of the organization with the goal of espousing the brand or a certain message and written with flair and personality.

“Managing a crisis and working with legal counsel are two areas of communication that will always be a part of a PR professional’s responsibilities,” notes Diane Schwartz, vice president of PR News. “The Legal PR Awards shines a light both on how law firms are communicating to their stakeholders and to how the PR industry is in the driver’s seat when a crisis hits.”

More information on the award program and this year’s winners is available at http://www.prnewsonline.com/awards/csr2009_event-finalists.html.

The Supreme Court (8-1) in a January 13 decision confirmed that the “Mobile-Sierra presumption” that rates and terms of a wholesale power or natural gas contract are presumed to be just and reasonable applies as against all challenges and challengers, including non-parties to the contract, so long as the contract was freely negotiated at arm’s length.  In NRG Power Marketing, LLC v. Maine Pub. Utils. Comm’n (NRG), Justice Ginsburg writing for the majority reversed a 2008 DC Circuit ruling in Maine Pub. Utils. Comm’n v. FERC (Maine PUC) that the Mobile-Sierra presumption of lawfulness applied only to challenges from one of the parties to the contract and not to all other non-party challengers who, the lower court ruled, were entitled to a less-exacting standard of review.  Rejecting the DC Circuit’s holding as undermining the stability of contracts in energy markets, the Supreme Court’s NRG decision makes clear that the applicability of the Mobile-Sierra presumption to contract rates “does not depend on the identity of the complainant who seeks FERC investigation.”  NRG, slip op. at 10. (more…)

The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld a U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) civil enforcement action against a New York Mercantile Exchange broker for “knowingly” manipulating settlement prices for electricity future contracts on behalf of Avista Energy, Inc. in 1998.  In DiPlacido the court lowered the CFTC’s penalty by one third, and affirmed the CFTC’s cease-and-desist order, registration revocation, and 20-year trading prohibition. (more…)

On October 16, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit revived a lawsuit filed by residents and property owners along the Mississippi Gulf coast against several corporations in the energy, fossil fuels and chemicals industries alleging that the defendants were responsible for property damage caused by Hurricane Katrina.  Comer v. Murphy Oil USA, et al., No. 07-60756 (5^th Cir. Oct. 16, 2009).  The district court dismissed the plaintiffs’ state law nuisance, trespass and negligence claims, finding that the plaintiffs had not adequately linked defendants’ operations to Hurricane Katrina and that, in any event, liability for damages relating to global warming constituted a nonjusticiable political question best left to Congress and the Executive branch.  The Fifth Circuit disagreed on both of these points, and reversed and remanded the case for further proceedings. (more…)

The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas dismissed a twenty-six-count indictment that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and Justice Department had brought against four former BP traders for allegedly attempting to manipulate the TET propane market in 2004 in violation of the Commodities Exchange Act (CEA). In doing so, the court appears to have narrowed significantly the CFTC’s (and possibly other regulators’) authority to prosecute allegations of price manipulation. (more…)