Justia Energy, Oil & Gas Law Opinion Summaries

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).

The Alcoa Power Generating Company ("Alcoa") petitioned for review of two orders of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ("Commission") with respect to the relicensing of its Yadkin Project facilities in North Carolina. At issue was whether the petition for review was ripe in light of on-going state administrative review and stay of certification and whether the certifying agency waived its authority by not issuing a certification that was effective and complete within one year under section 401 of the Clean Water Act ("Act"), 33 U.S.C. 1341(a)(1). The court held that the petition was ripe for review where the waiver issue was fit for review and the legally cognizable hardship that Alcoa would suffer from delay sufficed to outweigh the slight judicial interest in the unlikely possibility that the court may never need to decide the waiver issue. The court also held that there was no waiver issue where the "effective" clause would not operate to delay or block the federal licensing proceeding beyond section 401's one-year period.

The Pacific Regional Director of the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service ("Director") caused four oil and gas leases off the coast of California, for which appellants had originally paid the United States over $140 million, to expire. The Director later testified that he based his decision solely on political considerations and that absent such considerations, he would have extended the leases instead. At issue was whether the Interior Board of Land Appeals ("IBLA") should have adopted the decision the Director said he would have made absent political influence in order to cure the Director's original decision of political taint. The court affirmed the district court's decision and held that the IBLA fulfilled its role and appellants received all they were entitled to, i.e., an agency decision on the merits without regard to extrastatutory, political factors.