Last week, Judge Scott Skavdahl vacated BLM’s 2016 methane Waste Prevention Rule. 
The Judge spends 10 pages documenting the “loopty-loops” of the litigation surrounding the 2016 Rule and the Trump administration’s efforts to rescind the rule. Here, I’m with him. It’s difficult to review the tangled process of judicial review of this rule without being embarrassed for our judicial system.
Judge Skavdahl then spent 47 pages on the merits. … More
Yesterday, Judge Scott Skavdahl of the District of Wyoming held that the Bureau of Land Management did not have authority to regulate the environmental impacts of fracking. 
I think Judge Skavdahl probably got it right, but I also think it’s a much closer question than the Judge acknowledged and I could imagine either the 10th Circuit or the Supreme Court reaching a different conclusion.
Judge Skavdahl first reviewed the various statutes cited by BLM as providing authority for the rule. … More