More Details on Range's Legal Challenge

The Tribune-Review takes a close look at Range Resources’ legal challenge to an Allegheny County municipality’s drilling laws:

Texas-based driller Range Resources could be appealing to two of its own business partners when it challenges South Fayette’s oil and gas zoning ordinance next month.
Two of the township’s three zoning board members lease land to the company. Both men, Fred Cardillo and board chairman John Alan Kosky, said on Wednesday they don’t think they will have to recuse themselves from the case in which Range claims South Fayette enacted an illegal, de facto ban on drilling in the township.
“A Range (legal action) such as this, which potentially affects the rights of all municipalities … in the commonwealth … shouldn’t be decided by Range leaseholders who have already expressed bias against our zoning ordinance,” township Commissioner Deron Gabriel wrote in an e-mail. “These … members have a financial interest in the outcome of this case, do they not?”
Range Resources controls 4,000 acres in South Fayette and petitioned the board on Tuesday. It claims the township blocked most land from drilling, and then required drilling pads to be so big that none can fit on the rest of the land. Township officials denied the claim. The board’s next meeting is Sept. 14.

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