3rd Circuit approves Allegheny Forest drilling
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The U.S. Forest Service overstepped its authority when it imposed a ban on oil and gas drilling in the Allegheny National Forest, according to a federal appeals court ruling issued last week.
The ruling is a setback for environmental groups that had sought to delay or prevent drilling in the 512,000-acre forest, where the surface area is owned by the federal government, but 93 percent of the below-ground mineral rights are privately owned.
The 1911 law that established the forest gives the government rights only to the surface while preserving access to the land for owners of privately held mineral rights, a unanimous three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found.
The dispute erupted when the Forest Service struck a settlement with two environmental groups that significantly changed its process for approving drilling by suspending all approvals while it conducted a multiyear, forest-wide environmental impact study.
Mineral rights owners, joined by oil and gas companies, filed suit and won an injunction that ordered the Forest Service to return to its previous policy of managing drilling in a "cooperative process" that allowed mineral rights owners to give the agency 60 days' notice of drilling plans.
In his 2009 injunction, U.S. District Judge Sean McLaughlin of the Western District of Pennsylvania concluded that the Forest Service's settlement with the environmental groups triggered a "sea change" in the agency's policy and amounted to a de facto ban on drilling that was likely to last several years.
Now the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld the injunction after finding that the drilling ban would irreparably harm the mineral rights owners.
"The Service does not have the broad authority it claims over private mineral rights owners' access to surface lands," U.S. Circuit Judge Jane R. Roth wrote in her 38-page opinion in Minard Run Oil Co. v. U.S. Forest Service.
Judge Roth, who was joined by Judges Julio M. Fuentes and Michael A. Chagares, found that the lower court had "carefully considered and ultimately credited the testimony of several business owners that the new drilling moratorium had dramatically affected their business and would probably cause them to shut down or go bankrupt if it continued."
First Published September 26, 2011 12:00 am
