Deon Daugherty, editor-in-chief, Oil & Gas Investor: We are here at DUG Appalachia in Pittsburgh with Stephanie Noble, a partner in the commercial and business litigation group at Vinson & Elkins, talking about some policy changes that might be ahead. So Stephanie, if you would kind of give us your view of changes that might occur in regulatory policy in the energy space from the incoming Trump administration.

Stephanie Noble, Vinson & Elkins: So what we know for sure is what Trump has said as part of his campaign and what he intends to do with respect to energy policy going forward in his second term as president. And he has announced that he would like to roll back the Biden era administration's energy policies, particularly the pause on LNG export approvals, the new EPA regulations with respect to methane and methane emissions and CO2 emissions, and then also the SEC's, climate disclosure regulations. The final rulemaking went to effect this year. And so the Trump administration will likely, as quickly as possible, try to undo a lot of that, and whether there's some elements of that rulemaking that survives is possible. But his intention, his stated intention is to roll back a lot of that.

DD: Okay. And something that we had discussed a little bit on the panel was some of the Biden administration's environmental justice considerations that had been kind of built into some of them. What do you expect might happen there on those provisions? Well, first off, let me ask you, can you explain what that means and then what might happen to those provisions?

SN: Yep, absolutely. So one of President Biden's executive orders was to direct his federal agencies to consider environmental justice and climate impacts in their decision making. And environmental justice is kind of in big picture terms, is considering the disproportionate impacts that pollution and emissions or climate factors may have on certain sectors of the community as opposed to others. You know, low income neighborhoods, minority groups. And that was a directive from the president to his agencies to consider that in their rulemaking. And so we've seen impacts of that in terms of approving new LNG projects. There's been legal challenges filed claiming, well, FERC shouldn't have approved an LNG project because they didn't appropriately assess environmental impacts or environmental justice. And so they cited the executive order that Biden issued as strengthening their legal position in those cases. And so what we're very likely to see from a Trump administration is rolling back immediately repealing those executive orders. I could see that happening very early on in his administration. And that will have some immediate impact in terms of agency decision making.

DD: Okay. And what might be some of the hurdles, legal hurdles in the way of the president taking those actions?

SN: Well, I think what we'll likely see in terms of legal challenges will come up in the way of federal agency rulemaking. For example, when President Obama was in office and he enacted new methane emissions reporting guidelines, that was the subject of legal challenges. And then when President Trump took office for the first time, he rolled back a lot of those methane emissions reporting guidelines and emissions requirements, and his attempt to roll back those regulations was the subject of a lawsuit. And a federal judge stayed the impact of the new EPA under the Trump administration, their rules actually trying to roll back those methane emissions guidelines. And so we're likely to see something similar happen here where the new Trump administration will attempt to roll back the current EPAs methane emissions rules and regulations. And there will be a legal challenge claiming that the EPA didn't follow the necessary procedures or exceeded their powers under their governing statute.

And so what can happen is, of course, a federal judge reviewing that can issue an injunction, can actually pause and enforcement or pause implementation of rules and regulations, and that can delay enactment of any given rule. It also just takes time at the outset for the agency to go through the rulemaking process. They have to take into account certain data, they have to interact with the industry, they have to provide for notice and comments. And so that process takes time too. So in terms of the actual implementation of Trump's policy, that will take a little bit of time. It won't happen overnight. And then even after that, you have the legal challenges. All of this is complicated somewhat by the Supreme Court's recent decision to overturn Chevron, which provided Chevron deference to agency legal interpretations. And so now what the Trump administration will experience when they're dealing with these legal challenges to federal agency rulemaking is they won't be able to rely on that deference to their own agency's legal interpretations, which could make the legal challenges harder to overcome.

DD: A lot of interesting things ahead, it sounds like. Thanks very much, Stephanie.

SN: Thank you.

DD: And thank you very much for joining us to hear from Stephanie Noble about policy implications of a new Trump administration here at DUG Appalachia.

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