Marcellus Shale
Pennsylvania sits at the heart of what is likely to be one of the largest natural gas plays in North America. The Marcellus Shale formation stretches under 65 million acres of land from West Virginia to New York, with an estimated resource value of 500 trillion cubic feet equivalents of natural gas. The largest portion of the Marcellus Shale fairway lies in an area along the spine of the Appalachian Mountains running from southwestern Pennsylvania (Fayette, Greene, Washington and Westmoreland Counties) to northeastern Pennsylvania (Bradford, Susquehanna and Lycoming Counties).
In contrast to certain other areas of the country where natural gas production may be occurring, Pennsylvania has a complex and extensive environmental regulatory program administered and enforced by a variety of governmental entities with overlapping jurisdiction, including the United States Environmental Protection Agency, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, the Susquehanna and Delaware River Basin Commissions, the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission, the Pennsylvania Game Commission and local County Conservation Districts. Manko, Gold, Katcher & Fox has longstanding relationships and credibility with these governmental entities. In addition, the firm has broad experience in understanding and addressing the environmental compliance and permitting issues that have begun to arise from this major natural gas play.
As the starting point to our air quality practice, our attorneys are knowledgeable in multiple facets of federal and state air quality law. Our knowledge and experience span all aspects of the application of air regulatory requirements to our clients' operations, including permitting, compliance counseling, enforcement issues, auditing, reporting, and regulatory development.
Environmental issues associated with tapping the vast potential of the Marcellus Shale formation include:
- Securing permits and approvals in a timely fashion that contain acceptable permit conditions, including:
- Handling threatened and endangered species issues;
- Counseling on compliance with Pennsylvania's unique array of solid waste regulations, including the intersection between the Oil and Gas Act and requirements for generating, transporting, storing and processing residual waste;
- Defending permits and approvals against third party challenges, or pursuing administrative challenges to adverse permit conditions or permit denials;
- Responding to spills or other unanticipated or emergency events;
- Defending against civil penalty assessments and agency enforcement orders;
- Handling all aspects of community concerns and challenges to siting proposed projects (including wells, pipelines, production facilities, and water management systems);
- Defending against citizen suits;
- Defending tort lawsuits alleging property diminution, personal injury and annoyance and inconvenience, including class actions;
- Prosecuting or defending cost recovery actions relating to environmental remediation and natural resource damages;
- Handling administrative appeals of promulgated regulations and agency policies; and
- Reviewing and commenting on proposed regulations and policies relevant to the development of the Marcellus Shale formation.
Manko, Gold, Katcher & Fox has deep experience in handling the types of issues that are associated with this emerging natural gas play. For example, our firm is involved in one of the first state enforcement actions in Pennsylvania relating to Marcellus Shale drilling activities that not only deals with compliance with Pennsylvania's environmental requirements, but also with the control of client sensitive business information. The firm also has experience in dealing with natural gas transmission systems as a result of our representation of a natural gas pipeline company in an enforcement action initiated by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection for alleged violations of the Clean Streams Law and the Solid Waste Management Act related to the handling of pipeline liquids at the company's compressor stations throughout the Commonwealth. In addition, we have advised clients on the environmental permitting associated with the construction and operation of frac water treatment and recycling systems.
Our team of lawyers (a number of whom have backgrounds in engineering and other technical disciplines) are assisted by two in-house technical consultants, who understand the technical underpinnings of environmental regulations and, together with the firm’s lawyers, help craft solutions to the environmental issues that arise from the technical and legal aspects of Marcellus Shale activities.
In matters in which our clients have ongoing relationships with law firms that are either inexperienced in environmental law or unfamiliar with the intricacies of Pennsylvania’s environmental programs or the regulators who administer them, the lawyers at Manko, Gold, Katcher & Fox work seamlessly with existing legal teams to achieve the objectives of our clients.
