The Sabin Center’s newest publication, Enforcing Legacy Environmental Liabilities on the Outer Continental Shelf, examines legal strategies to hold the former owners of offshore oil and gas infrastructure, like rigs, wells, and pipelines, liable for the costs of “decommissioning” their facilities—plugging wells, removing offshore installations, and generally making the site […]
Fossil Fuels
11 posts
Today, the Sabin Center filed two amicus briefs—one on behalf of the National League of Cities and the U.S. Conference of Mayors, and a second on behalf of experts in carbon capture and storage (CCS) science and technology—in support of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in West Virginia v. […]
In November of 2022, when the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (“BLM”) proposed new rules to control venting, flaring, and leaks from oil and gas leases on federal land (the “Fossil Fuel Waste Rule”), they noted that these leasing rules would have an enormous ancillary climate benefit. […]
In the first months of 2024, legislators in four states—Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, and Vermont—have pushed for legislation that would collectively require large fossil fuel producers and refiners to pay for hundreds of billions of dollars of state-level climate adaptation infrastructure. E&E News reports that similar legislation may soon be […]
On March 13, 2023, the Bureau of Land Management (“BLM”) approved a major oil drilling operation on the North Slope of Alaska. The so-called “Willow Project” will be developed by ConocoPhillips and involve the drilling of up to 199 new oil wells, spread across three well pads, along with the […]
On Tuesday, May 9, the Sabin Center and the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment launched Transferred Emissions are Still Emissions: Why Fossil Fuel Asset Sales Need Enhanced Transparency and Carbon Accounting. The increased atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases (GHGs) is driving global climate change on […]
By Romany Webb On Thursday, August 13, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a final rule rescinding the new source performance standards for methane emissions from facilities used in the production, processing, transmission, and storage of oil and natural gas. At the same time, EPA also rescinded the standard for […]
By Jessica Wentz and Michael Burger Last year, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a key decision on the scope of greenhouse gas emission impacts that must be considered by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in environmental reviews of pipeline projects. In Sierra Club v. FERC, No. 16-1329 […]