Earlier this month, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued an Order Assessing Civil Penalties against City Power Marketing, LLC (City Power) and its founder and sole owner, K. Stephen Tsingas[1] (collectively, Respondents)  for violating section 222 of the Federal Power Act (FPA) and section 1c.2 of the Commission’s regulations, which prohibit energy market manipulation.[2]…

On June 9, 2015, theFederal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) conditionally approved significant reforms to PJM’s capacity market, implementing the Capacity Performance Resource product, with PJM’s compliance filing due within 30 days. [1]   FERC found such reforms were necessary to address “the confluence of changes in the PJM markets, including both recent performance issues…impacted by…

In May, two “loophole” penalty orders were issued regarding recent fraud and manipulation investigations conducted by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) Office of Enforcement (OE), which are discussed below. What will June bring? To start, on June 3, the House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power heard testimony, including from…

My column this month in the Pennsylvania Law Weekly considers natural resource damages and their measurement.  NRDs are available under a number of federal programs.  To my knowledge, however, Pennsylvania state trustees have only sought to recover NRDs twice.

We have to think about whether that might change.  The Supreme Court’s plurality opinion in…

In February 2012, Pennsylvania adopted comprehensive revisions to its Oil and Gas Act known as “Act 13.”  Among the changes was an expanded preemption of local regulation of oil and gas activities. Prior law prohibited municipalities from regulating “how” oil and gas development would proceed, but permitted zoning control over “where” development could occur. Act…

As Michael Cooke noted in his post the following day, on June 3 EPA proposed its “Clean Power Plan” that EPA estimates would, if adopted and implemented, cut greenhouse gas emissions from existing electricity generating units by 30% from 2005 levels.  79 Fed. Reg. 34,829 (June 18, 2014).  A few weeks later, as Mike…

This month’s column in the Pennsylvania Law Weekly addresses the contamination risk faced by charities that accept donated land.  I particularly treat the problem of charities whose very purpose calls for them to accept environmentally suspect property.  Perhaps it has been a vacant lot subject to fly dumping.  Perhaps the charity is specifically intended to locate in…