Powder River Basin Resource Council v. Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission
Supreme Court of Wyoming
320 P.3d 222 (Wyo. 2014)
The Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (defendant) required companies to disclose hydrofracking chemical compounds, subject to trade-secret confidentiality protections under the Wyoming Public Records Act; when the Powder River Basin Resource Council and others (plaintiffs) sought public disclosure of the compounds, the Commission redacted information it deemed trade secrets, and Halliburton (defendant-intervenor) argued disclosure would let competitors reverse-engineer its products. The district court reviewed the Commission's confidentiality determination under a deferential administrative-procedure standard and granted summary judgment to the Commission, and the plaintiffs appealed.
Whether a reviewing court must determine, based on the evidence, rather than deferring to the agency, whether chemical compounds used in hydrofracking are trade secrets exempt from public disclosure.