Justia Energy, Oil & Gas Law Opinion Summaries

Petitioners sought review of a decision by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) under the Atomic Energy Act, 42 U.S.C. 2201 et seq., to renew the operating license of the Duane Arnold Energy Center (DAEC) in Palo, Iowa. The court held that the NRC order at issue was entered on December 16, 2010, and the petition for review was not filed until February 28, 2011. Therefore, the petition was filed 14 days late and accordingly, the court dismissed the petition for review as untimely.

This case stemmed from a contract between the Indonesian government and the Exxon Mobil Corporation (Exxon), a United States corporation, and several of its wholly owned subsidiaries where Exxon operated a large natural gas extraction and processing facility in the Aceh province. Plaintiffs were fifteen Indonesian villagers. Eleven villagers filed a complaint in 2001 alleging that Exxon's security forces committed murder, torture, sexual assault, battery, and false imprisonment in violation of the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) and the Torture Victim Protection Act (TVPA), 28 U.S.C. 1350, and various common law torts. Four villagers alleged that in 2007, Exxon committed various common law torts. All plaintiffs alleged that Exxon took actions both in the United States and at its facility in the Aceh province that resulted in their injuries. Plaintiffs challenged the subsequent dismissal of their claims and Exxon filed a cross-appeal, inter alia, raising corporate immunity for the first time. The court concluded that aiding and abetting liability was well established under the ATS. The court further concluded that neither the text, history, nor purpose of the ATS supported corporate immunity for torts based on heinous conduct allegedly committed by its agents in violation of the law of nations. The court affirmed the dismissal of the TVPA claims in view of recent precedent of the court. The court concluded, however, that Exxon's objections to justiciability were unpersuasive and that the district court erred in ruling that plaintiffs lacked prudential standing to bring their non-federal tort claims and in the choice of law determination. The court finally concluded that Exxon's challenge to the diversity of parties in the complaint at issue was to be resolved initially by the district court. Therefore, the court affirmed the dismissal of plaintiffs' TVPA claims, reversed the dismissal of the ATS claims at issue, along with plaintiffs' non-federal tort claims, and remanded the cases to the district court.

This appeal challenged a final order of the Public Utility Commission (PUC) in a true-up proceeding under Chapter 39 of the Utilities Code. AEP Texas Central Co. (AEP), a transmission and distribution utility, and CPL Retail Energy, L.P., its affiliated retail electric provider, initiated a proceeding under section 39.262 to finalize stranded costs and other true-up amounts and the state, several municipalities, and several other parties who were consumers of electricity or represent consumer interests (collectively, consumers), intervened in the proceeding. The issues before the court concern market value, net book value (NBV), and the capacity auction true-up. The court held that where, as here, the utility managed to sell its stake in a nuclear plant, the court saw no error in using the sale of assets method, which was, if anything, the preferred method for valuing generation assets. The court also held that it saw no error in PUC's approach where the interest rate AEP received on its stranded costs was grossed up. The court further held that section 39.262 unambiguously specified that the statutory capacity auction price, not some other blended price the PUC found more appropriate, must be used in calculating the capacity auction true-up amount. On remand, the PUC must recalculate the capacity auction true-up in a manner consistent with the court's opinion in State v. PUC, rather than relying on the proxy price it selected in the true-up proceeding. Accordingly, the court granted the petition for review, affirming in part and reversing in part.

The state public utilities commission approved a power-purchase agreement (PPA) between National Grid and Deepwater Wind, the respondents. Under the PPA, Deepwater Wind agreed to construct an offshore wind farm in state waters and then sell the generated electricity to National Grid, a statewide power distributor. National Grid, in turn, pledged to purchase the generated electricity and apportion the cost of building the wind farm to in-state ratepayers over the course of the twenty-year contract. Dissatisfied with National Grid's cost-distribution plan, petitioners Toray Plastics and Polytop challenged the commission's assessment that the PPA met all statutory preconditions for approval. The Supreme Court affirmed the commission's decision, concluding that the commission accurately interpreted and applied the law by making findings that were lawful and reasonable, fairly and substantially supported by legal evidence, and sufficiently specific for the Court to ascertain that the evidence upon which the commission based its findings reasonably supported the result.

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 U.S. Department of Energy breached its agreement to accept spent nuclear fuel from nuclear power utilities, including plaintiff, a Wisconsin power cooperative, no longer in operation. Plaintiff maintains 38 metric tons of spent uranium on its property. Had DOE not breached the agreement, the material would have been removed in 2006. Plaintiff joined a consortium of 11 utilities to develop a private repository. The district court awarded about $37.6 million: $16.6 million for maintaining the fuel on-site from 1998 to 2006, $12 million for investment in the consortium, and $6.1 million for various overhead costs associated with mitigation. The Federal Circuit vacated in part. The claims court properly determined that plaintiff was entitled to damages for the entire period, 1999-2006; properly awarded overhead; properly offset the consortium costs; but should have limited the award with respect to the consortium to expenses incurred for mitigation.