The United States, Arkansas Game and Fish Commission (“AGFC”), and Arkansas Department of Energy and Environment – Division of Environmental Quality (“DEQ”) entered into a Consent Decree with ExxonMobil Pipeline Company, LLC...more
A complaint was filed in the United States District Court for the District of Arkansas against ExxonMobil Pipeline Company, LLC and Mobil Pipe Line Company (collectively, “Exxon”) addressing the 2013 release of oil from the...more
The Accidental Chemical Release Rules have an effective date of May 10, 2024, and includes a number of situations requiring compliance, generally by May 10, 2027. The new Clean Water Act facility response plan...more
The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal addressing whether a mixture of petroleum and chemicals constitutes “oil” under the Oil Pollution Act (OPA). In doing so, the Court has effectively rejected the efforts of...more
Late last month, in Munoz v. Intercontinental Terminals Company, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals held that the liability provisions of CERCLA and the Oil Pollution Act do not overlap and that, consequently, where oil and...more
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit (“5th Circuit”) addressed in an October 27th Opinion an issue arising out of the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (“OPA”) and Comprehensive Environmental Response,...more
In 1990, Congress passed the Oil Pollution Act, also known as the OPA. The act was in response to the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989, and it amended the Clean Water Act of 1972. Its purpose was to avoid oil spills from...more
On October 5, 2021, the United States District Court for the Southern District of Illinois denied the plaintiffs’ Motion for Class Certification in Morr v. Plains All American Pipeline, LLC 2021 WL 4478660 (S.D. Illinois,...more
US DOJ recently announced a settlement of federal and state natural resource damage (NRD) claims asserted by federal and state trustees under the Oil Pollution Act (OPA) and state law against CITGO Petroleum Corporation...more
On January 15, 2021, the US Environmental Protection Agency (the EPA) announced that it approved an application from the State of Texas to administer the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) program for...more
In a matter of first impression, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has ruled that an oil-filled submerged electrical transmission cable is a "facility" under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (OPA). Power Authority...more
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit recently reversed a lower court decision that held that the release of thousands of gallons of oil from a submarine power-transmission cable into Long Island Sound was not...more
On April 10, 2020, the U.S. EPA published “Interim Guidance on Site Field Work Decisions Due to Impacts of COVID-19.” Directed specifically to the Agency’s Regional Administrators, the interim guidance was issued for response...more
Negotiating a contract, a charter party in maritime parlance, is a balance of leverage and sometimes a leap of faith. Certain issues are more important to companies than others, and for those issues, the language of clauses...more
The final decision in the ATHOS I saga has recently been issued by the U.S. Supreme Court, upholding the decision of the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit to the effect that a plain reading of the language found in...more
On March 30, 2020, in Citgo Asphalt Refining Co. v. Fescati Shipping Co., Ltd., the U.S. Supreme Court held that, based on its specific wording, a charter party’s safe-berth clause constituted an express warranty of safety,...more
On June 3, 2019, the United States lodged a proposed Consent Decree under the Clean Water Act and the Oil Pollution Act that would resolve a suite of natural resource damages (NRD) claims by federal, state, and tribal...more
Does a charterer that agrees to nominate a “safe berth” to load and discharge cargo guarantee the berth’s safety for the vessel? If you are litigating this issue in the U.S. courts within the Second and Third Circuits, the...more
The ITC incident - On Sunday, March 17, 2019, at approximately 10:00 a.m., a storage tank caught fire at the Intercontinental Terminals Company (ITC) Deer Park facility, near Houston, Texas. The fire burned for several...more
Three environmental organizations filed a Complaint for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief (“Complaint”) in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York against the United States Environmental...more
On January 25, the Texas Supreme Court issued a unanimous ruling in the case of Anadarko Petroleum Corp. and Anadarko E&P Co. v. Houston Cas. Co., et al., characterized as an “interlocutory permissive appeal,” reversing the...more
Court Faults FERC in its Handling of ANR Storage Company’s Six Year Quest for Authorization to Charge Market-Based Rates for Natural Gas Storage Services - On September 21, 2018, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District...more
There are few questions more important in the context of oil spill liability than who constitutes a Responsible Party under the U.S.’s Oil Pollution Act (OPA). Recently, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in...more
The 2012 Macondo Well blowout and Deepwater Horizon rig explosion gave rise to a slew of lawsuits. Our subject today is one of them. ...more
In an important decision of first impression construing the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (“OPA,” 33 U.S.C. §§2701 et seq.), the Fifth Circuit has held the owner and operator (“Nature’s Way”) of a “dominant mind” tugboat liable...more