Pipeline Infrastructure Developers Face Changing Legal Landscape

As America's pipeline infrastructure has grown in recent years, project developers have encountered new and significant legal challenges from environmental groups, landowners, state governments, and others. Several recent judicial developments threaten to inject deep uncertainty in two areas of central importance to the industry: developers' power to condemn state-owned lands, and the practical ability to commence FERC-approved projects notwithstanding a pending rehearing challenge.

Background: The Natural Gas Act of 1938 (NGA) is the federal statutory scheme that regulates the interstate activities of the U.S. natural gas industry. Among other things, the law grants private developers the authority to exercise eminent domain—the mandatory sale of private or state-owned land for public use—to acquire rights of way necessary to construct and install interstate natural gas pipelines. Historically, upon securing a permit from the Federal Energy Regulatory