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Mealey's Fracking

  • August 29, 2024

    Group Says Fracking Railroad Ruling ‘Flies In The Face’ Of High Court Precedent

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Association of American Railroads (AAR) filed an amicus curiae brief on Aug. 29 in support of parties that want the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse a lower court ruling that held that the Surface Transportation Board (STB) failed to adequately examine the risk of wildfires and the impact on groundwater posed by the construction of a proposed rail line in Utah that would carry products related to hydraulic fracturing to and from the shale formation in the Uinta Basin.  The AAR says the lower court ruling “flies in the face” of Supreme Court precedent.

  • August 27, 2024

    City Of Baltimore: Fracking Operators, Others Conspired To Inflate Oil Prices

    ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The city of Baltimore has filed a putative class action against multiple hydraulic fracturing companies in New Mexico federal court arguing that they engaged in a conspiracy to restrict the production of crude oil, along with “Wall Street investors, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), and certain non-OPEC member countries aligned with OPEC, called “OPEC+” in an effort to inflate the price of crude oil.

  • August 20, 2024

    Study: Companies Use ‘Personal Strategies’ To Get Landowners To Allow Fracking

    LAS VEGAS — A research study published Aug. 19 by the journal “Nature Energy” has found that landmen working for hydraulic fracturing companies “have important advantages in the form of persistent and personalized tactics” against landowners in Ohio to force the unitization of wells against the desires of landowners, and it found evidence that landmen engaged in legal compulsion when this persistence fails, which “suggests a considerable procedural inequity at the heart of the process.”

  • August 19, 2024

    Man Files Putative Class Alleging Some Shale Oil Producers Fixed Gas Prices

    SAN FRANCISCO — A man filed a putative class action on Aug. 16 against multiple hydraulic fracturing companies in California federal court contending that they engaged in a conspiracy “to coordinate, and ultimately constrain, domestic shale oil production, which has had the effect of fixing, raising, and maintaining the price of retail gasoline” in violation of the Sherman Act.

  • August 12, 2024

    Briefly: Some Claims May Proceed In Securities Fraud Case About Pipeline

    PHILADELPHIA — A federal judge in Pennsylvania has ruled in a long and winding securities fraud class action related to the construction of a hydraulic fracturing pipeline that only claims brought by shareholders that are based on corrective disclosures made by the pipeline company in August 2018 may proceed.

  • August 09, 2024

    North Dakota Says It Owns Long-Disputed Mineral Rights In Missouri Riverbed

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — North Dakota, which is an intervenor defendant in a mineral rights dispute between Native American tribes and the U.S. government, has filed an answer in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia asking it to declare that title to the disputed Missouri Riverbed and underlying mineral interests is quieted in favor of the state.

  • August 09, 2024

    Plaintiffs Seek 10th Circuit Review Of Fracking Royalty Class Action Saga

    DENVER — Plaintiffs in a royalty payment dispute on Aug. 8 appealed to the 10th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals a lower court ruling that denied their motion to remand the case to Colorado state court and granted a hydraulic fracturing company’s motion for judgment on the pleadings, as the third iteration of a long-running class action plods along.

  • August 08, 2024

    Groups Insist Federal Fracking Permit Approval Causes Harm, Standing Established

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — Environmental groups that challenge federal hydraulic fracturing permits issued by the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) pertaining to New Mexico’s Permian Basin and Wyoming’s Powder River Basin filed a reply brief on Aug. 7 in the District of Columbia Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals insisting that they have plausibly alleged standing because they have alleged sufficient facts that their members’ “aesthetic, recreational, spiritual, and professional interests in listed species, public lands, and a healthy environment are harmed” by the issuance of fracking permits.

  • August 07, 2024

    Panel Affirms Dismissal Of Damages Case Related To Fracking Well Operation

    BATON ROUGE, La. — A state appeals panel in Louisiana on Aug. 7 affirmed a lower court’s ruling which dismissed with prejudice a claim brought by an oil and gas production company against Halliburton Energy Services Inc. (HESI) seeking damages for injury to a well that the production company said was caused by a coring gun provided by HESI which had been used in well operations.

  • August 07, 2024

    Fracking Advocates: Lease Cancellation ‘Inconsistent’ With Agency’s Regulations

    ANCHORAGE, Alaska — An industrial development group that advocates for hydraulic fracturing has filed a reply brief in Alaska federal court contending that the U.S. Department of the Interior’s (DOI) cancellation of federal fracking leases was “inconsistent with fundamental and well-established principals of both common-law and statutory due process, and was inconsistent” with the DOI’s own regulations.

  • August 06, 2024

    Panel Reverses, Remands Case Over Drilling Rights, Says Contract Is ‘Unambiguous’

    WOODSFIELD, Ohio — An appellate panel in Ohio has reversed and remanded a mineral rights dispute, ruling that an assignment of interest dating to 2007 is “unambiguous” and limits the drilling rights in question to a maximum depth of 4,000 feet.  The panel also concluded that a 21-year statute of limitations also applies to the case; therefore, the trial court erred when it ruled in favor of property owners who claimed ownership over the deep rights involved in a drilling contract.

  • August 06, 2024

    Company: 10th Circuit Must Reverse Royalty Ruling, Contract ‘Wrongly Interpreted’

    DENVER — An oil and gas company on Aug. 5 filed a reply brief in the 10th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals arguing that it should reverse a hydraulic fracturing royalty ruling because the lower court wrongly interpreted a 50% obligation portion of the future royalty calculation method in the fracking contract to mean that an energy company is limited in the royalties it pays to the oil and gas company.

  • August 06, 2024

    4th Circuit Says It Lacks Jurisdiction In West Virginia Abandoned Wells Case

    RICHMOND, Va. — A panel of the Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on Aug. 5 ruled that it lacked jurisdiction to rule on an appeal brought by a hydraulic fracturing operator in a protracted dispute over abandoned wells because the order being appealed, which denied the operator summary judgment on its claim that the case should be dismissed because the plaintiffs failed to join necessary parties, was not final.

  • August 05, 2024

    Fracking Plaintiffs Want Stay Lifted To Pursue New Trial In Royalty Dispute

    COLUMBUS, Ohio — Plaintiffs in a hydraulic fracturing royalty dispute on Aug. 2 moved in Ohio federal court to lift a stay so post-trial proceedings can continue as they seek a new trial after a jury determined that the plaintiffs had not reserved their rights under the leases.

  • August 01, 2024

    Fracking Operator Says Oil Company Damaged Its Well, Did Not Follow Standards

    ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A hydraulic fracturing operator has sued an oil and gas exploration and production company in New Mexico federal court, alleging that it is liable for damages to a well caused by the hydraulic fracture treatment and the company’s general failures to follow recognized industry standards and act as a reasonable prudent operator.

  • July 31, 2024

    Worker Seeks Damages For Injury At Fracking Site, Also Claims Discrimination

    OKLAHOMA CITY — A worker who alleges that he was injured while performing his duties on a hydraulic fracturing rig has sued a well services company and the fracking operator that owned the well where the incident took place, seeking an unspecified amount of compensatory and punitive damages.

  • July 29, 2024

    Panel: Fracking Operator ‘Explicitly Authorized’ To Install Water Pipeline

    ST. LOUIS — An Eighth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel has affirmed a lower court ruling that granted summary judgment to a hydraulic fracturing operator in a surface use dispute on grounds that the agreement between the parties was “unambiguous and explicitly authorized” the fracking company to install water pipelines on a landowner’s property as part of oil and gas extraction activities.

  • July 26, 2024

    Court Says Fracking Company Did Not Exhaust Administrative Remedies In Fee Dispute

    HARRISBURG, Pa. — In an unpublished opinion, the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania has ruled that an energy company did not exhaust its administrative remedies in opposing fees levied on it by the Pennsylvania Public Utilities Commission (PUC) related to hydraulic fracturing wells, therefore the company’s petition for a judgment declaring that it was not responsible to pay the fees was dismissed.

  • July 25, 2024

    Utah: National Monuments Case Should Be Reopened Or Else State Will Suffer Harm

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — The state of Utah has filed a reply brief in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia arguing that it should reopen a lawsuit that has been stayed for three years pertaining to former President Donald J. Trump’s decision to reduce the size of two national monuments in the state, in part for hydraulic fracturing purposes, because if the stay remains in place, the state will suffer harm.

  • July 12, 2024

    Companies Deny Breach Of Contract Claims Related To Marcellus Shale Operations

    WHEELING, W.Va. — Hydraulic fracturing operators have filed a joint answer in West Virginia federal court denying allegations brought in a complaint filed by a company that holds a lease to oil and gas rights that contends that the companies breached their contract by drilling fracking wells through the subsurface of leaseholder’s property without proper authority.

  • July 12, 2024

    Groups Say Federal Agency’s Approval Of ExxonMobil’s Lease Violated Multiple Laws

    LOS ANGELES — Environmental groups have sued the federal agencies in California federal court seeking declaratory and injunctive relief, contending that their approval of ExxonMobil Corp.’s offshore oil and gas drilling lease violates multiple laws because the government’s determination that the lease was in the national interest failed to “failed to consider several highly relevant factors.”

  • July 11, 2024

    Fracking Companies Violated Antitrust Laws By Controlling Oil Production, Man Says

    PORTLAND, Maine — A man has filed a putative class action in Maine federal court against a small group of hydraulic fracturing operators, arguing that they violated federal and state antitrust laws when they conspired to “coordinate, and ultimately constrain, domestic shale oil production” as a means to controlling the price of gasoline and setting it at an “artificially high level.”

  • July 11, 2024

    Fracking Operator Says Appeal Of Injunction In Mineral Rights Dispute Is ‘Unripe’

    CINCINNATI — A hydraulic fracturing company has filed a response brief in the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals contending that it should affirm a lower court’s decision that granted the company a preliminary injunction in a mineral rights dispute because the challenges to the injunction brought by a land management company are “unripe and lack substantive merit.”

  • July 11, 2024

    Fracking Operators Say Permits Complied With NEPA, Agency Used ‘Reasoned Analysis’

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — Hydraulic fracturing operators that are intervenor defendants in a dispute over federal fracking permits issued by the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) have filed a reply brief in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia arguing that it should deny the plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment, grant the intervenors’ motion for summary judgment and find that the DOI gave “reasoned analysis and responses” and complied with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) when it granted the permits in question.

  • July 11, 2024

    Mineral Rights Owners: Defense Expert Lacks Methodology, Evidence Rules Not Met

    COLUMBUS, Ohio — Mineral rights holders have filed a reply brief in Ohio federal court arguing that it should exclude the testimony of defense expert David M. Posner on grounds that he has “no discernible methodology and a limited factual basis for his opinions” and that the defendants failed to meet their burden of showing that it is more likely than not that Posner’s testimony will be admissible pursuant to Federal Rule of Evidence 702.