Energy Legal Blog

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) recently released its much anticipated Barnett Shale Formation Area Monitoring Projects survey.  The survey arrives amidst increasing press coverage of the opportunities and challenges of energy development in the nation’s shale regions.  Conducted over three months in the latter part of 2009, the survey focuses on characterizing air emissions associated with natural gas and oil production in the Barnett Shale.  Out of a total of 94 monitoring sites spread over 5,000 square miles and six counties, benzene levels at two sites were determined to exceed TCEQ’s short-term health-based comparison value, and at another 19 sites, TCEQ expressed concern about long-term cumulative exposure. (more…)

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 so-called FRAC Act, legislation introduced in June of last year by Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO) and Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) in the House of Representatives and Senators Casey (D-PA) and Shumer (D-NY) in the Senate, received a fresh jolt of publicity this week when the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Environment convened a hearing on the recently announced merger between ExxonMobil and XTO Energy, Inc., one of the nation’s largest independent natural gas producers.  While nominally about the impact of the proposed merger on the natural gas market, the hearing, chaired by Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), quickly focused in on hydraulic fracturing, the practice of injecting a high-pressure fluid mix of water, sand and a proprietary chemical mix into formations to release natural gas.  Hydraulic fracturing is specifically exempted from EPA regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act.  The FRAC Act seeks to repeal this exemption and also to require operators to disclose the chemical constituents of the fracing fluid used at any given well. (more…)

Maryland and New Jersey’s state utility boards August 24 petitioned the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit to review FERC’s approval of PJM’s initial Reliability Pricing Model (RPM) capacity auctions. The state regulators, joined by more than a dozen other petitioners, argued before FERC that “[t]he absence of price discipline provided by new capacity resources and the ability of existing resources to withhold some capacity within the RPM rules combined to produce capacity prices in the transition period that are not comparable to those that would be produced in a competitive market or determined under cost-based regulation.” As a consequence, the state parties asked FERC to re-compute four RPM auctions (for delivery years 2007-8, 2008-9, 2009-10, and 2010-11), which were allegedly over-inflated. FERC roundly rejected these arguments, finding that the state parties’ requested relief was “not exactly clear” and that no violation of the RPM Settlement Agreement or the PJM tariff was evident, and therefore dismissed the complaint. (more…)

The US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has issued an opinion relating to the allocation of costs for new transmission facilities among regional utilities in the PJM Interconnection, L.L.C. (“PJM”).    In Illinois Commerce Commission et al., v. FERC et al., issued August 6, the Court considered petitions for review of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (“Commission”) decision regarding the allocation of transmission costs in PJM.  While the Court affirmed the Commission’s decision to price transmission for certain existing facilities on a marginal cost basis, it granted the petitions for review of the Commission’s decision on pricing new facilities of 500 kV or greater.  Historically, such new facilities in PJM were financed by regional utilities based upon the expected benefit the utility would receive from the new investment.  PJM sought, and the Commission approved, a new allocation methodology, whereby the costs for 500 kV and above transmission facilities would be funded by utilities on a pro rata basis, regardless of the benefit to be received by the utility.  (more…)