Ninth Circuit denies privacy to oil company over Alaska drilling data
Ninth Circuit denies privacy to oil company over Alaska drilling data
Publish Date: 2026-05-27 16:48:00
Source Domain: www.courthousenews.com
ConocoPhillips wanted to prevent an Alaska commission from releasing information about its oil wells, but the appellate panel found that there’s no federal law that stops the state from disclosing the data.
(CN) — A Ninth Circuit panel determined on Wednesday that no federal law requires petroleum well data from an oil and gas company to remain private.
A lower court ruled previously Alaska’s Oil and Gas Conservation Commission couldn’t release data about wells ConocoPhillips Alaska, Inc. wanted shielded because federal law preempts a state statute requiring the disclosure.
But U.S. Circuit Judge Eric Miller, a Donald Trump appointee, writing for the three-judge panel, said no supremacy clause issues exist with the Alaska petroleum reserve.
That clause means federal law trumps state statute when there’s a conflict, but Miller didn’t see any “express” conflict.
“ConocoPhillips argues that the Production Act expressly preempts Alaska law,” Miller said. “That argument gets off to a difficult start because the Production Act does not have a preemption clause.”
The company conceded that point, but argued the act incorporates a preemption clause from another law.
The panel was unconvinced. Miller wrote that the Production Act incorporates certain conditions listed in another law — data-submission requirements — and nothing else.
States have no power to collect data from companies operating on the Outer Continental Shelf, Miller wrote. But Congress included provisions making that information, given to the federal government, available to the states. The federal government can share that data, though states can’t disclose it.
“On the Reserve, by contrast, Alaska has its own authority to gather — and disclose — data collected from oil and gas exploration, authority that it exercised even before Congress opened the Reserve to private exploration,” Miller wrote.
ConocoPhillips leased federal land on the National Petroleum Reserve–Alaska and…
