Law Firms Rush To Help Drillers Navigate PA's Laws and Regulations

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.

April 23, 2012 | 10:00 AM

The Post-Gazette takes a look at one of the many law firms cashing in on Pennsylvania’s natural gas-drilling boom:

The companies hoping to tap the lucrative natural gas below much of Pennsylvania must first navigate a thicket of legal updates, legislative development and environmental regulations above it — all of which seem to change every day.
To assist, the attorneys at Downtown’s Babst Calland have done their homework so drillers don’t have to. The result: “Natural Gas Development in Pennsylvania: Recent Activities and Expected Trends,” a 45-page report on everything from land-use law to the Shell Oil Co. decision last month to build a massive petrochemical plant in Beaver County.
…The study — now in its second edition — is available for order on the firm’s website and traces shale gas development right up until Pennsylvania’s Act 13 legislation, which introduced a plethora of new regulations and practices to the industry just this month.