Court Won't Take Another Look At Allegheny Forest Ruling

Scott Detrow

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Scott Detrow is a congressional correspondent for NPR. He also co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast.

Detrow joined NPR in 2015 to cover the presidential election. He focused on the Republican side of the 2016 race, spending time on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, and also reported on the election's technology and data angles.

Detrow worked as a statehouse reporter for member stations WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KQED in San Francisco, California. He has also covered energy policy for NPR's StateImpact project, where his reports on Pennsylvania's hydraulic fracturing boom won a DuPont-Columbia and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2013.

January 4, 2012 | 1:53 PM

Scott Detrow / StateImpact Pennsylvania

A drilling rig in the Tioga State Forest

A federal court will not reconsider a decision leading to more natural gas drilling in the Allegheny National Forest, as the AP reports.

ERIE, Pa. (AP) — The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has refused to reconsider a ruling last year that ended a ban on drilling in the Allegheny National Forest in northwestern Pennsylvania.
The appeals court ruled in September that the U.S. Forest Service only controls surface rights, not the mineral rights below the forests lands. The court says the mineral rights are privately owned, and those owners should enjoy reasonable access to the surface to drill for oil and gas.