Mountain States Legal Foundation (MSLF) has entered one of its most important legal battles ever! Although MSLF made history in a case it took to the Supreme Court of the United States an unprecedented three times TIME called MSLF’s victory in that case “a legal earthquake”) and although MSLF’s advocacy at the U.S. Supreme Court also limited the ability of environmental groups to file lawsuits, MSLF’s newest case may be even more significant!

In federal district court for the western district of Pennsylvania, MSLF is challenging an illegal deal, quickly and quietly entered into, by the Obama Administration with several environmental groups. With the nation’s oldest, family owned oil company (Minard Run Oil Company) and Pennsylvania Oil and Gas Association (POGAM) as its clients, MSLF charges that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to settle the “sweetheart lawsuit” filed by the environmental groups is illegal (some say it is unethical) because the Obama Administration has absolutely no authority to do what it has agreed to do!

At stake in this case are private property rights, high-paying jobs in one of the most depressed regions of the country, and the search for energy in one of the hottest gas prospects in the nation, Marcellus Shale. Experts say Marcellus Shale contains 3,445 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, enough to supply the entire USA for 20 years. Plus, the gas is located in the energy dependent East Coast! Penn State reports that Marcellus Shale development will yield 98,000 jobs and a $14 billion impact in Pennsylvania in 2010 alone!

Now that is true economic stimulus!

Unfortunately, Obama’s vow to make alternative forms of energy more economical (they are vastly less efficient) than fossil fuels requires him to drive up the price of oil and gas. That is why his officials have seized oil and gas leases, closed vast areas to the search for energy, and demanded tax increases that will kill the development of America’s vast energy reserves!

And now, Obama is killing the development of the greatest source of new natural gas in the country, gas that will heat eastern homes for decades. Ironically, MSLF’s fight against Obama’s decision is taking place less than 40 miles from where a commercial oil well was drilled successfully on August 27, 1859: Titusville, Pennsylvania, birthplace of the Nation’s energy industry. MSLF’s fight is a crucial one; plus, the battle could reach the Supreme Court!

MSLF’s battle in defense of private property, the rule of law (not men), and the search for energy is occurring in the Allegheny National Forest (ANF) in northwestern Pennsylvania. That is where Forest Service employees who oppose the search for energy first attempted to apply—illegally—the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) to the development of private oil, gas, and mineral (OGM) rights in the ANF.

NEPA is the law used by environmental groups and activist judges to stop federal actions they oppose. For example, NEPA is why no oil refineries have been built since NEPA’s passage, why levees were not improved in New Orleans before Katrina hit, and why trees rot on the stump after a forest fire instead of being harvested. NEPA is referred to, by experts, as “the epitome of paralysis by analysis!” Whatever NEPA studies, gets studied to death!

When it became clear that the Forest Service employees’ plan was illegal, environmental groups filed their sweetheart lawsuit demanding that the Forest Service do lengthy NEPA studies for every plan to find and develop natural gas in the ANF and impose a year’s moratorium on the development of all natural gas in the ANF. Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder quickly and quietly agreed, even though what he agreed to do is illegal.

The ANF covers 500,000 acres in Elk, Forest, McKean, and Warren Counties in northwestern Pennsylvania and is comprised of lands that were once privately owned but were purchased by the Forest Service in the 1920s. Because the United States bought only the surface, most of the OGM rights in the ANF (93%) are privately owned. Thus, there is no basis whatsoever for any federal government regulatory authority over OGM rights in the ANF.

Although, under Pennsylvania law, owners of OGM estates have the right to go on the surface to access their property and to occupy so much of the surface as necessary to remove their property, they must exercise their rights with “due regard” for the interests of surface owners. That the United States owns the surface does not change the law. This was recognized by a Pennsylvania federal district court in a 1980 ruling involving Minard Run Oil Company. In fact, that government agencies have no more authority over owners of OGM rights than do other surface estate owners was reaffirmed by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in a 2009 decision!

For decades, the Forest Service responded to the operational plans of the owner of OGM rights with consultations and then a notice to proceed. A notice to proceed, however, is not a decision to permit activity because the Forest Service has no permitting or regulatory power over OGM rights. In fact, Congress codified this very procedure in the Energy Policy Act of 1992.

Ignoring federal and state law, the Obama Administration seeks, by settling the sweetheart lawsuit, to end the search for energy in Pennsylvania. It had hoped that the public would not notice; however, MSLF noticed and is fighting back. Thank you for your support of this critical battle.