## Facts

- Salem Township enacted local regulations aimed at controlling “surface and land development associated with oil and gas drilling operations.”
- While litigation over an earlier ordinance was pending, the Township adopted subdivision and land development legislation containing an appendix that largely re-enacted the prior oil-and-gas regulatory scheme.
- The ordinance imposed township-level standards and approval requirements addressing drilling-related activities and operations.
- Oil and gas producers and industry groups sought declaratory relief, asserting that the ordinance was preempted by Pennsylvania’s Oil and Gas Act, which contains an express supersession clause for local enactments regulating covered well operations.
- The trial court granted summary judgment for the producers on Oil and Gas Act preemption; the Commonwealth Court affirmed.

## Issues

1. Whether the Pennsylvania Oil and Gas Act expressly preempts a township ordinance that comprehensively regulates oil and gas drilling operations.
2. Whether preemption should be assessed provision-by-provision or whether the ordinance’s integrated regulatory scheme warrants invalidation as a whole to the extent it regulates covered well operations.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania affirmed.
- The Court held that the Oil and Gas Act’s express preemption provision superseded the Township’s ordinance to the extent it regulated oil and gas well operations covered by the Act.
- The Court rejected salvaging the ordinance through a granular provision-by-provision approach where the enactment functioned as an integrated, operation-level regulatory code targeting matters governed by the Act.

## Legal Principles

- An express statutory supersession clause preempts local enactments that regulate technical or operational aspects of oil and gas well operations governed by the state Oil and Gas Act and administered by the Department of Environmental Protection.
- Municipal authority to enact traditional land-use controls is not displaced merely because oil and gas activity is involved; however, municipalities may not impose a parallel regulatory scheme for drilling operations themselves.
- Where a local enactment is structured as a comprehensive regulatory program for oil and gas operations, the preemptive force of the Oil and Gas Act applies to the scheme insofar as it regulates covered well operations, rather than permitting severance to preserve the program’s core.

## Conclusion

The court upheld summary judgment for the producers, concluding that the Oil and Gas Act’s express preemption clause bars municipalities from adopting comprehensive, operation-level ordinances regulating oil and gas well operations already governed by state law, even though municipalities retain limited land-use authority that does not regulate technical well operations.


Range Res.-Appalachia, LLC v. Salem Twp., 964 A.2d 869 (Pa. 2009)