Justia Energy, Oil & Gas Law Opinion Summaries

Plaintiff filed a complaint against defendant, seeking indemnity and/or contribution based on the damage defendant allegedly caused through gross negligence in removing plaintiff's vessel from a coral reef. At issue was whether the district court properly denied defendant's motion to compel arbitration of the dispute under the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), 9 U.S.C. 1 et seq., where defendant alleged that the district court erred in refusing to apply English arbitrability law. The court held that based on the Supreme Court's reasoning in First Options of Chicago, Inc. v. Kaplan, courts should apply non-federal arbitrability law only if there was clear and unmistakable evidence that the parties intended to apply such non-federal law. Because there was no clear and unmistakable evidence in this case, federal arbitrability law applied. Under federal arbitrability law, the court's decisions in Mediterranean Enterprises, Inc. v. Ssangyong Construction Co. and Tracer Research Corp. v. National Environmental Services, Co., mandated a narrow interpretation of a clause providing for arbitration of all disputes "arising under" an agreement. Under this narrow interpretation, the present dispute was not arbitrable. Therefore, the court affirmed the district court's judgment. View "Cape Flattery Ltd. v. Titan Maritime, LLC" on Justia Law

The Sierra Club and several related parties brought this action against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (the Corps) seeking to set aside a Clean Water Act, 33 U.S.C. 1251 et seq., permit (the section 404 permit) the Corps had issued to the Southwestern Electric Power Company (SWEPCO) which planned to construct a new power plant. SWEPCO subsequently appealed the preliminary injunctions ordered by the district court, arguing that the district court lacked subject matter jurisdiction and that the district court abused its discretion in granting the preliminary injunction. The court held that the district court did not err in concluding that the Sierra Club and Hunting Club had Article III standing. The court also held that plaintiffs have shown a likelihood of success where there was ample evidence in the record to show that plaintiffs were likely to succeed on at least three of their claims; that there was a likelihood of irreparable harm; that the balance of harms weighed in favor of an injunction; and that the public interest that might be injured by a preliminary injunction did not outweigh the public interest that would be served by the injunction. Accordingly, the court affirmed the preliminary injunction. View "Sierra Club, et al. v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, et al.; Hempstead County Hunting Club, Inc. v. Southwestern Elec. Power Co., et al." on Justia Law

This case stemmed from petitioner's rates filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for its Michigan oil pipeline where petitioner agreed with two of its three shippers to restrict rate increases for a three-year moratorium period. At issue was the initial rate petitioner must use to calculate its new annual ceiling levels. Petitioner argued that after the end of the moratorium period, its ceiling levels should be calculated as if its maximum rates had been set under FERC's indexing methodology all along. In contrast, FERC would simply pick up the rates where the settlement agreement left off, using the last rate under the agreement as the initial rate for the period after the agreement. The court held that neither the agreement nor the relevant regulations clearly laid out how to determine the rates petitioner could charge now that the three-year period had past. Therefore, finding both the agreement and the regulations ambiguous, the court deferred to the reasonable views of FERC and denied petitioner's petition for review.

Three state and local governmental units, along with individual citizens, petitioned the court for review of and other relief from two "determinations" made by the Department of Energy (DOE) and the other respondents: the DOE's attempt to withdraw the application it submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for a license to construct a permanent nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada; and the DOE's apparent decision to abandon development of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste depository. The court concluded that the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, 42 U.S.C. 10101-270, set forth a process and schedule for the siting, construction, and operation of a federal repository for the disposal of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. At this point in that process, the DOE had submitted a construction license application for the Yucca Mountain repository and the NRC maintained a statutory duty to review that application. Therefore, the court held that unless and until petitioners were able to demonstrate that one of the respondents had either violated a clear duty to act or otherwise affirmatively violated the law, petitioners' challenges to the ongoing administrative process was premature. Accordingly, the court held that it lacked jurisdiction over petitioners' claims and dismissed the petitions.

Appellants, nonprofit environmental organizations, appealed from a judgment of dismissal entered by the district court in an action against the EPA under the citizen suit provision of the Clean Air Act (CAA), 42 U.S.C. 7401 et seq., challenging the EPA Administrator's failure to take action to prevent the construction of three proposed pollution-emitting facilities in Kentucky. The court held that the validity of the Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) permits issued under the noncompliant State Implementation Plan (SIP), and the possible invalidity of the amended SIP, sufficiently raised a current controversy to save the litigation from mootness. The court also held that the Administrative Procedures Act, 5 U.S.C. 500 et seq., did not provide a cause of action to review the EPA Administrator's failure to act under section 7477 of the CAA because her decision was an agency action "committed to agency discretion by law." Therefore, the EPA Administrator's decision was discretionary and not justiciable and thus, appellants failed to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. Although the district court dismissed the case pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1) for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, the court affirmed the district court's action because dismissal would otherwise have been proper under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6).

This suit followed BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc.'s (BPXA) temporary shut-down of its pipelines and oil production in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, upon its discovery of a leak in a pipeline located in its Prudhoe Bay Eastern Operating Area. Plaintiff, on behalf of a class of purchasers of BP p.l.c. shares, subsequently brought a class action suit against BPXA alleging claims arising under Sections 10(b), 18, and 20(a) of the Securities and Exchange Act (SEC), 15 U.S.C. 78b(b), 78r, and 78t(a), and Rule 10b-5. Both parties appealled in part from the judgment of the district court. The court held that BPXA's breach of a contractual promise of specific future conduct, even though the contract was filed in conjunction with SEC reporting requirements, was not a sufficient foundation for a securities fraud action. The court declined plaintiff's invitation to review other issues that were not certified for interlocutory appeal. In light of the court's conclusion that breached contractual obligations did not constitute misrepresentations by BPXA that were actionable under the securities laws, the court did not reach the issue of scienter. Accordingly, the court reversed and remanded.

The Georgia Parties, Gwinnett County, Georgia, and the United States Army Corps of Engineers (the Corps) appealed from a grant of summary judgment in this consolidated suit arising from more than 20 years of litigation between the parties. All of the underlying cases related to the Corps' authority to operate the Buford Dam and Lake Lanier, the reservoir it created, for local water supply. On appeal, the parties raised several jurisdictional matters and asserted a number of substantive claims. The court held that the district court erred in finding that it had jurisdiction to hear certain parties because the Corps had not taken final agency action. The court also held that the district court and the Corps erred in concluding that water supply was not an authorized purpose of the Buford Project under the Rivers and Harbors Act (RHA), Pub. L. No. 79-525, 60 Stat. 634. The court also held that the district court erred in finding that the 1956 Act expired after 50 years. The court also provided certain instructions to the Corps on remand and the Corps shall have one year to make a final determination of its authority to operate the Buford Project under the RHA and the Water Supply Act, 43 U.S.C. 390b(a).

The City of Great Falls, Benefis Health Care, and Electric City Power (ECP) filed a complaint with the Montana Public Service Commission (PSC) challenging the lawfulness of NorthWestern Energy's (NWE) refusal to allow ECP to provide electricity supply to meters owned by the City and Benefis. The PSC issued a final order concluding that ECP could not provide electricity supply service to the disputed meters, basing its decision upon its interpretation that "customer," as contained in Mont. Code Ann. 69-8-201(2), meant an individual meter or point of delivery, rather than an entity or person. The City, Benefis, and ECP appealed the final order. The district court reversed, finding error in the PSC's statutory interpretation, and remanded the matter to the PSC to allow all of the City's and Benefis' meters to receive electricity supply service from ECP. NWE and the PSC appealed. The Supreme Court affirmed, holding the district court correctly determined that under the statute, the term "customer" means an entity or person rather than an individual meter and, accordingly, correctly permitted the City and Benefis to receive electricity from ECP at the disputed meters.

Plaintiff, operator of an electricity plant, sued defendant ("the county"), seeking to enjoin Expedited Bill 29-10, which imposed a levy on large stationary emitters of carbon dioxide within the county, on the ground that it violated the United States and Maryland Constitutions. At issue was whether a Montgomery County exaction on carbon dioxide emissions, levied only upon plaintiff's electricity-generating facility, was a tax or a fee. The court held that the carbon charge, which targeted a single emitter and was located squarely within the county's own "programmatic efforts to reduce" greenhouse gas emissions, was a punitive and regulatory fee over which the federal courts retained jurisdiction. Accordingly, the court reversed and remanded for further proceedings.

Plaintiffs, several states, the city of New York, and three private land trusts, sued defendants, four private power companies and the federal Tennessee Valley Authority, alleging that defendants' emissions substantially and unreasonably interfered with public rights in violation of the federal common law of interstate nuisance, or in the alternative, of state tort law. Plaintiffs sought a decree setting carbon-dioxide emissions for each defendant at an initial cap to be further reduced annually. At issue was whether plaintiffs could maintain federal common law public nuisance claims against carbon-dioxide emitters. As a preliminary matter, the Court affirmed, by an equally divided Court, the Second Circuit's exercise of jurisdiction and proceeded to the merits. The Court held that the Clean Air Act, 42 U.S.C. 7401, and the Environmental Protection Act ("Act"), 42 U.S.C. 7411, action the Act authorized displaced any federal common-law right to seek abatement of carbon-dioxide emissions from fossil-fuel fired power plants. The Court also held that the availability vel non of a state lawsuit depended, inter alia, on the preemptive effect of the federal Act. Because none of the parties have briefed preemption or otherwise addressed the availability of a claim under state nuisance law, the matter was left for consideration on remand. Accordingly, the Court reversed and remanded for further proceedings.