scholarly journals Givens v. Mountain Valley Pipeline, LLC and the Unresolved Circuit Split

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-162
Author(s):  
Karen Alday

The natural gas industry is central to the United States economy. However, due to vague regulations and judicial leniency, natural gas pipeline companies have almost zero restraint in exercising eminent domain. Their current operations mirror that of the federal government’s authority to exercise immediate possession. Recently, landowners have contested the pipeline industry’s authority to exercise eminent domain, which has developed into a circuit split. The Fourth Circuit, and the six other circuits that have followed suit, hold that pipeline companies have the substantive right to immediate entry and are entitled to a preliminary injunction before a trial on just compensation. The Seventh Circuit holds that the courts do not have the authority to grant immediate entry, and the pipeline company must complete the entire standard condemnation process before entering the property. In 2019, there were two attempts to bring this issue before the Supreme Court, and both attempts failed. This Note evaluates the most recent attempt in Givens v. Mountain Valley Pipeline, LLC and argues that the Supreme Court should address this issue and adopt the Seventh Circuit approach.

2018 ◽  
Vol 112 (4) ◽  
pp. 741-745 ◽  

On June 26, 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld President Trump's most recent iteration of restrictions on entry to the United States by nationals from certain foreign countries. Following several rewrites of this travel ban, ensuing legal challenges, and lower court injunctions, the Court, in a five-to-four decision authored by Chief Justice Roberts, reversed the latest ruling of a lower court that had granted a partial preliminary injunction against the ban. Although acknowledging that there was considerable evidence tying the travel ban to bias against Muslims, the Supreme Court found that the plaintiffs were nonetheless unlikely to succeed either in their statutory claim that Trump lacked the authority to impose this ban or in their constitutional claim that the ban violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The Court accordingly reversed the lower court's injunction and remanded the case for further proceedings. The ruling, based on the Trump administration's asserted national security interest, leaves in place travel restrictions imposed on nationals of seven countries—Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen—only two of which are not Muslim-majority countries.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald van der A ◽  
Jos de Laat ◽  
Henk Eskes ◽  
Jieying Ding

<p><span><span>New TROPOMI (Sentinel 5P) high quality satellite measurements of nitrogen dioxide (NO<sub>2</sub>) over snow-covered regions of Siberia reveal previously undocumented but significant nitrogen oxides (NO<sub>x</sub> = NO + NO<sub>2</sub>) emissions associated with the natural gas industry in Western Siberia. Besides gas drilling and natural gas power plants, also gas compressor stations for the transport of natural gas are sources of high amounts of NO<sub>x</sub> emissions, which are emitted in otherwise pristine regions. The emissions from these remote gas compressor stations are at least an order of magnitude larger than those reported for North American gas compressor stations, possibly related to less stringent environmental regulations in Siberia compared to the United States. This discovery was made possible thanks to a newly developed technique for discriminating snow covered surfaces from clouds, which for the first time allows for satellite measurements of tropospheric NO<sub>2</sub> columns over large boreal snow-covered areas. This results in 23% more TROPOMI observations on an annual basis. Furthermore, these observations have a precision four times better than nearly any TROPOMI observation over other areas and surfaces around the world. These new results highlight the potential of TROPOMI on Sentinel 5P as well as future satellite missions for monitoring small-scale emissions</span></span></p>


1986 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 2
Author(s):  
Arnold R. Madigan ◽  
Deborah A. MacDonald ◽  
Dari R. Dornan ◽  
Henry C. Jr. Rosenthal

This paper deals with the effects of natural gas industry regulation and deregulation in the United States on the marketing of Canadian gas.


Subject US methane regulations. Significance US rules aimed at 45% reductions in methane emissions from the oil and gas industry by 2025 are to be finalised in the middle of this year, according to a White House plan unveiled last month. Methane emissions are the second-most common greenhouse gas (GHG) in the United States and account worldwide for nearly 20% of 'radiative forcing' -- a measure of potential climate change impact. The new rules will apply from 2016 and only to new or newly modified sites. Impacts The push to switch to natural gas from coal could lead to a rapid increase in gas installations. However, the natural gas industry has expanded during the 'shale revolution' and those operations will be exempt from current rules. Landfill regulations may proliferate at municipal and state level, where the industry is less politicised.


2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 31-65
Author(s):  
Brian J. Galli ◽  
Aamir Khizar

In the United States today, there are thousands of miles of an extended network of natural gas pipelines across the nation. Current pipeline explosions and leaks in several regions have challenged the natural gas industry to re-evaluate efforts and to pursue proactive strategies. Safety and the environmental threat has become a primary concern in the United States and around the world, but mostly in cases where natural gases, oil, and other hazardous wastes are intricate. Thus, a significant point in the natural gas pipeline industry that signifies both the economic and social issue is the unplanned pipeline risk. In this article, a quantitative data analysis was performed for Downstate New York companies, Con Edison and National Grid. There, the data from various natural gas pipelines was observed for the trend regarding failing material, failure cause, aging characteristics, and perform a risk assessment to come up with training and risk checklist that could be crucial for risk handling strategies. The statistical analyses of the natural gas pipeline-related incident data for distribution pipelines between 2012 and 2016, which were composed from Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration (PHMSA) of the United States Department of Transportation (DOT), are compiled. The total miles in the gas distribution pipelines in downstate New York is approximately 48,539 as of 2016. The equipment failure, other incident cause, other outside force, and excavation damages are the leading causes of the pipe-related incidents, which are responsible for over 20% of the total incidents between 2012 and 2016. As a result, a quantitative research methodology has been developed as the suitable approach to achieve risk assessment. Mainly, this approach aims towards risk management in natural gas industry projects using the maximum likelihood method on 70 rupture incidents between 2012 and 2016, which were collected from the PHMSA pipeline incident database. The hypothetical quantitative risk assessment of the gas distribution pipelines are illustrated by combining the statistics of the pipeline rupture incidents, as well as risk assessment performed in the present study.


2014 ◽  
Vol 136 (07) ◽  
pp. 32-37
Author(s):  
John Kosowatz

This article discusses the economic growth opportunities due to liquefied natural gas (LNG) in the United States. Advanced drilling and production techniques have given the United States more natural gas than its markets can handle. Converting that bounty into liquefied natural gas promises to transform the U.S. gas industry into a global energy power. LNG is the generally preferred form of natural gas for use in long-haul heavy-duty trucks, because liquefying it reduces volume. More fuel can be loaded into the tank. Local-use vehicles, which operate from a central yard, often use CNG. For LNG, the only serious limits that people are talking about today are related to infrastructure costs, particularly in the development of exports. Even if the international demand for LNG stays high, exports from the United States cannot happen for a few years because of the time needed for plant construction. Optimism reigns among players throughout the natural gas industry.


1988 ◽  
Vol 43 (12) ◽  
pp. 1019-1028 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald N. Bersoff ◽  
Laurel P. Malson ◽  
Donald B. Verrilli

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