Judge queries all sides in suit over Mora County drilling ban

The word “fracking” came up only a few times during the five hours of oral argument in federal court Monday on an oil company’s challenge to a Mora County ordinance intended to forestall the practice – or indeed any kind of oil and gas extraction. U.S. District Judge James O. Browning posed lots of questions to attorneys for the Royal Dutch Shell subsidiary SWEPI, which is challenging the constitutionality of the Mora County Community Water Rights and Local Self-Government Ordinance of 2013. He did the same to an attorney representing both Mora County and a land grant group seeking to intervene in the action. The litigation focuses on the county ban making it “unlawful for any corporation to engage in the extraction of oil, natural gas or other hydrocarbons within Mora County.” Browning followed his usual practice, telling attorneys his “inclinations” with respect to at least a dozen legal issues but reserving final judgment for his thorough, and likely lengthy, opinion. Browning signaled the likelihood that he will deny the motion to intervene by the land grant and probably find some of the language in the ordinance a violation of federal law – for instance, a segment that denies corporations rights under the 1st and 5th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Whether that kind of judicial editing would eviscerate the ordinance to the point that it would no longer be viable was among the questions he wanted attorneys to answer...more