Oil, Gas, and Mineral Law Commons^™

Deals In The Heartland: Renewable Energy Projects, Local Resistance, And How Law Can Help, Christiana Ochoa

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Informed by original empirical research conducted in the Midwestern United States, this Article provides a rich and textured understanding of the rapidly emerging opposition to renewable energy projects. Beyond the Article’s urgent practical contributions, it also examines the importance of formalism and formality in contracts and complicates current understandings.

Rural communities in every windblown and sun-drenched region of the United States are enmeshed in legal, political, and social conflicts related to the country’s rapid transition to renewable energy. Organized local opposition has foreclosed millions of acres from renewable energy development, impeding national and state-level commitments to achieving renewable energy targets …

Contracts On The Seabed, Christiana Ochoa

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Four million square kilometers of seabed within the sovereignty of Pacific Island nations are currently under contract for mineral exploration or exploitation. Over a million additional square kilometers of the non-sovereign seafloor are licensed for such use. Historically, these licenses have served to establish “squatters’ rights” in anticipation of a distant future when the industry would develop the machinery to exploit oceanic mineral wealth. That moment has arrived, with the first seafloor mining machines rolling off production lines in 2015-2016. Indeed, but for failed financing, the first seabed mine would now be operating in the territorial ocean waters of Papua …

The Third Age Of Oil And Gas Law, James Coleman

Indiana Law Journal

History’s biggest oil boom is happening right now, in the United States, ushering in the third age of oil and gas law. The first age of oil and gas law also began in the United States a century ago when landowners and oil companies developed the oil and gas lease. The lease made the modern oil and gas industry possible and soon spread as the model for development around the world. In the second age of oil and gas law, landowners and nations across the globe developed new legal agreements that improved upon the lease and won these resource owners …

A Georgist Perspective Of Petroleum Taxation, Joseph Leeson

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Over a century ago, the town of Arden, Delaware, was founded on a unique single-tax-community system that radically altered the popular concept of land ownership. This system was premised on concepts developed by a man few know today but who was a major figure in economics during the 1800s, Henry George. George's public finance theory has been described as having received "intermittent attention over the years, with many eminent names in economics making at least a passing comment, but it has seen comparably little action in the policy debate arena and has been largely ignored by the modern era of …

States Rise To The Front Of Climate Legislation, But Can A State-Level Carbon Tax Work?, Katelyn Nicasio

Indiana Law Journal

This Note uses two recent Massachusetts carbon tax proposals to discuss the costs and benefits of such state-level climate change legislation but discusses similar regional proposals as well. Although a state carbon tax poses some limitations and concern for the increased tax burden relative to other states that have not imposed a tax, the adoption of state carbon taxes represents an important advancement in climate policy. Part I overviews legislative tactics used to combat climate change thus far, including common policy responses, and the current attitude of federal legislators toward the global climate crisis. Part II introduces the advantages and …

Letting Go Of Stability: Resilience And Environmental Law, Robert L. Fischman

Indiana Law Journal

Historic variation in the environment once served as a reliable guide to future behavior. Sustainability promised continuity of ecological and social structures and functions within the known envelope of historic variation. Now climate change and other environmental stressors are tipping systems into behaviors that no longer remain within the confines of precedent. Social-ecological systems are neither persistent nor predicable. Letting go of stability releases us from untenable expectations of steady maintenance of some natural order. Resistance to change will continue to play a role as environmental law suppresses disruptions and buys time. But resistance will eventually yield the stage to …

Fracking And The Rural Poor: Negative Externalities, Failing Remedies, And Federal Legislation, Matthew Castelli

Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equality

This Note examines the relationship between the rural poor and the negative externalities of hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”). It asserts that the rural poor are disproportionately burdened with fracking’s negative externalities and that comprehensive, national regulation is needed because current legal methods are insufficient to internalize these costs. The argument is made in four parts: describing fracking’s externalities; assessing their impact on the rural poor; analyzing current legal regimes; and proposing an equitable regulatory framework based on cooperative federalism.

Fracking produces three main categories of negative externalities: water, air, and land contamination. Water contamination can be caused by migration of fracking …

Breaking The Curse: A Multilayered Regulatory Approach, Hunter Dekoninck

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Eastern Africa has been plagued for generations with what Richard Auty considers 'The Resource Curse." This curse, translated into modern economic tragedies, is the exploitive extraction and use of precious minerals from Eastern Africa, specifically the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). As a result of attempts to combat the international market that perpetuates this curse, Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act, largely in response to human rights activism, passed into law a provision requiring companies to account to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for their use of certain listed foreign minerals. Although such regulation is …

Should Chevron Have Two Steps?, Richard M. Re

Indiana Law Journal

Prominent judges and scholars have criticized the familiar Chevron deference scheme on the ground that its two steps are redundant. But each step of traditional two-step Chevron actually does unique interpretive work. In short, step one asks whether agency interpretations are mandatory, whereas step two asks whether they are reasonable. Other judges and scholars defend two-step Chevron on the ground that the second step should be equated with arbitrary-and-capricious review. But that approach makes Chevron partially redundant with the Administrative Procedure Act and compresses the distinct mandatoriness and reasonableness questions into an artificially singular first step. This Article identifies a …

Regulation, Renegotiation, And Reform: Improving Transnational Public-Private Partnerships In The Wake Of The Gulf Oil Spill, John J. Mckinlay

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Automatic Fuel Adjustment Clauses: Time For A Hearing, Marshall A. Leaffer

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Through automatic fuel adjustment clauses, utilities in most states are permitted automatically to pass through to customers any increase in fuel costs, thereby circumventing a general rate hearing before a public utilities commission where the validity of any such rate increase could be publicly examined In this Article the author discusses the benefits and detriments of the automatic fuel adjustment clause, using the clause that existed in Ohio until quite recently as an example. He concludes that such a rate increase without a hearing can no longer be justified on the basis of uncontrollable fuel costs. Instead he advocates adoption …

Due Process And The Automatic Fuel Adjustment Clause, Randall Ogg

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Oil Pollution On Lake Superior: The Uses Of State Regulation, A. Dan Tarlock

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Natural Gas And Electric Utility Rate Reform: Taxation Through Ratemaking, Alfred C. Aman, Glen S. Howard

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Permanent Sovereignty Over Oil Resources, A Study Of Middle East Oil Concessions And Legal Change, By Muhamad A. Mughraby; The Law Of Oil Concessions In The Middle East And North Africa, By Henry Catton; The Evolution Of Oil Concession In The Middle East And Africa, By Henry Catton, A. A. Fatouros

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Eminent Domain - Review Of Route Selection Made By Public Utility Through Private Wildlife Refuge, A. Dan Tarlock

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

The Politics Of Oil, By Robert Engler, Charles M. Hewitt

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

P. G. Lake-Its Effect On A Conveyance By The Lessor Of A Lease Bonus With A Retained Royalty

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Integration And Competition In The Petroleum Industry, By Melvin G. Dechazeau, And Alfred E. Kahn, Charles M. Hewitt

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Power Of A Trustee To Execute Oil And Gas Leases

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Percentage Depletion For Oil-A Policy Issue, Harrop A. Freeman

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Public Or Private Power-Responsibilities Of The Fpc

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Control Of Entry Into The Natural Gas Pipeline Industry: The Fpc And The Certificate Of Convenience And Necessity

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Retail Marketing Of Petroleum Products After The Standard And Richfield Cases

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Injunction Without Sanction: The Iranian Fiasco, Frank E. Maloney

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

A National Policy For The Oil Industry, By Eugene V. Rostow, Philip B. Kurland

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Regulation Of Strip Coal Mining

Indiana Law Journal

State Regulation Note

State Regulation Of Interstate Pipelines-Natural Gas Act

Indiana Law Journal

Constitutional Law Note

Oil And Gas Conservation

Indiana Law Journal

Indiana Legislation, 1947

Municipal Ownership Of Utilities In Indiana, Harry T. Ice

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.