Business law is filled with a wide range of regulation and regulatory issues, and one of the main areas of business law for my research is energy law. Regulation impacts energy businesses at many levels. Energy companies have to deal land use regulations, air and water quality regulations, work place regulations, and (often) securities regulations.
On the land use and permitting side of things, oil and gas law has long been considered primarily a state issue, making such regulations relatively local (i.e., not federal). In recent years, with the increased use of high-volume hydraulic fracturing, many local governments have decided to restrict the process in their localities, splitting from state regulatory regimes that would allow the process. Interesting cases related to fracking bans from New York, Colorado, and Pennsylvania provide good examples of this process.
Texas Professor David B. Spence’s article about local hydraulic fracturing bans: The Political Economy of Local Vetoes, 93 Texas L. Rev. 351 (2015), discusses the debate about whether local governments should be ale to overrule the state law on oil and gas operations. Here’s the abstract:
As the controversy over fracking continues to sweep the nation, many local communities have enacted ordinances