While the impending shift to a Republican-led federal government and the expected rollback of environmental regulations would seem to be clear cause for celebration in the struggling oil and gas industry, the post-election mood among Pennsylvania’s energy and environmental lawyers ranged from optimism to apprehension.
The latter view was based in part on the fact that while the GOP also controls Pennsylvania’s legislature, the state still has a Democratic executive branch. For oil and gas operators, that means the state Department of Environmental Protection may not be as likely to decrease its regulatory efforts under Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf as the federal Environmental Protection Agency is apt to do under President Donald Trump.
