State Supreme Court Knocks Down Local Ordinance Regulating Oil & Gas Well Drilling

The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania this week announced its unanimous decision to uphold a Commonwealth Court ruling in 2005 rendering a Salem Township, Westmoreland County ordinance regulation oil and gas well drilling invalid.

 

The case involved theIndependent Oil and Gas Association of Pennsylvania, et al vs. Salem Township, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, No. 29 WAP 2008, in which lawyers from K&L Gates LLP represented a group of oil and gas producers and a trade association of such producers challenging a Salem Township ordinance.

 

Oil and gas producers argued the Salem Township ordinance in question contravened the Pennsylvania Oil and Gas Act, which preempts and invalidates local ordinances that attempt to regulate the same features of oil and gas operations regulated by the Act or accomplish the same regulatory purposes as the Act.

 

In response, the Township argued that its ordinance was a permissible exercise of municipal power, and that the scope of the Act’s preemption is quite limited.

 

The position of the oil and gas producers prevailed in the Westmoreland County Court of Common Pleas, where the producers won summary judgment, and during the ensuing appeal in the Commonwealth Court, where the en banc Court unanimously upheld the trial court’s entry of summary judgment.

 

Likewise, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court firmly rejected Salem Township’s positions in holding unanimously for the oil and gas producers.

 

In this first Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision dealing with the scope of the Act’s preemption, the Court agreed with the producers’ argument that that scope is much broader than what Salem Township envisioned, agreed that the Township ordinance fell within this scope by overlapping the Act in both regulatory subject matter and purpose, and held the Township oil and gas ordinance preempted and invalid in its entirety.

 

Authored by Mr. Justice Saylor, the Supreme Court decision described the challenged ordinance as an impermissible “attempt by the Township to enact a comprehensive regulatory scheme relative to oil and gas development within the municipality.”

 

The Court explained that the ordinance overlapped the provisions of the Act and, in some instances, actually imposed requirements more stringent than the regulations included in the Act, thus acting as an “obstacle to the legislative purposes underlying the Act.”

 

K&L Gates represented the oil and gas producers through every stage of this groundbreaking litigation, from the trial court to Supreme Court.