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Mealey's Fracking

  • April 04, 2025

    Fracking Operator: Permit Appeal Fails, Group’s Claims Are ‘Entirely Unsupported’

    HARRISBURG, Pa — A hydraulic fracturing operator has filed a brief with the Pennsylvania Environmental Hearing Board, arguing that it should grant summary judgment dismissal of an appeal brought by an environmental group that challenges seven well permits issued for a well pad in West Moreland County, Pa., on grounds that the groups’ claims are “entirely unsupported by the evidence of the record.”

  • April 04, 2025

    Judge Denies EPA’s Bid For Stay Of Methane Tax Case, Allows Intervention

    GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — A federal judge in Michigan has denied a motion by the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency seeking to stay a case in which a business advocacy group and an oil and gas association challenge the constitutionality of the methane waste emissions charge levied under the Clean Air Act (CAA), ruling that recent legislation disapproving the EPA’s rule “would appear to invoke well-worn principles of justiciability, particularly that of mootness.”  Meanwhile, the judge granted environmental groups permission to intervene.

  • April 03, 2025

    6th Circuit Says Fracking Operator Underpaid Royalties, Affirms $10M Award

    CINCINNATI — A panel of the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on April 2 affirmed a lower court’s ruling that awarded royalty owners $10 million against a hydraulic fracturing operator for the underpayment of royalties, ruling that, under the contract, the fracking company cannot deduct the costs of “processing” and “fractionation” from the royalties they pay landowners.

  • April 03, 2025

    Interior Secretary Must Require Offshore Driller To Update Plans, Groups Say

    LOS ANGELES — Environmental advocacy groups on April 2 sued Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum and others in California federal court alleging that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) is in violation of federal law because it has failed to require an offshore drilling company to update its development and production plans for a drilling unit on which it plans to resume operations following an equipment rupture in 2015.

  • April 02, 2025

    Objector To $17.3M Attorney Fees Award Says Class Counsel Committed ‘Malpractice’

    DENVER — The parties that object to the more than $17.3 million in attorney fees awarded as part of a $52 million oil and gas royalty settlement on April 1 filed individual briefs in the 10th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, with one contending that it is class counsel who “dragged this case out, imposing years of delay on the Class, merely to obtain and keep a large attorney’s fees,” and the other party arguing that the class should not be made to pay for class counsel’s “malpractice.”

  • April 02, 2025

    Groups Opposing Drilling In San Joaquin Valley Allowed To Amend Complaint

    FRESNO, Calif. — A federal magistrate judge in California on April 1 granted environmental groups leave to filed a second amended complaint in their lawsuit against the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) related to allegations that the agency violated federal law when it approved permits for drilling on public land in the San Joaquin Valley of California, saying that the declarations in the proposed second amended complaint contain “credible allegations” of respiratory distress to the plaintiffs as a result of the air pollution in the San Joaquin Valley that will be “exacerbated by BLM’s unlawful approval of the APDs at issue.”

  • April 02, 2025

    Class Says Fracking Companies Conspired To Fix Gas Prices, Violating Antitrust Law

    ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A man filed a putative class action in New Mexico federal court against multiple parties involved in hydraulic fracturing operations, contending that they have violated the Sherman Act and Missouri antitrust law because 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 crude oil, and thereby the price paid by end-users of oil-derivative products, including but not limited to gasoline.”

  • April 02, 2025

    Judge Orders Plaintiffs To File 4th Amended Complaint In Mineral Rights Dispute

    CLARKSBURG, W.Va. — Despite agreeing with a hydraulic fracturing operator that plaintiffs’ third amended complaint failed to properly plead a breach of contract claim, a federal judge in West Virginia did not dismiss the complaint, but ordered the plaintiffs to file a fourth amended complaint to address the current pleading’s lack.

  • April 02, 2025

    Judge Grants Fracking Operator Judgment On All Claims Brought By Landowners

    HARRISBURG, Pa. — A federal judge in Pennsylvania has granted a hydraulic fracturing company’s motion for summary judgment on all claims brought by plaintiffs who had alleged that it was liable for trespass and conversion related to its drilling activities, ruling that there was no evidence that the operator physically invaded the plaintiffs’ property by the injection of proppants and fracking fluids beneath it to facilitate the extraction of natural gas.

  • April 02, 2025

    Split Panel Says Arbitration Clause Not Applicable In Fracking Contract Dispute

    HARRISBURG, Pa. — In an unpublished opinion, a divided panel of the Pennsylvania Superior Court has affirmed a trial court ruling and held that a hydraulic fracturing company cannot compel arbitration in a dispute pertaining to oil and gas leasing rights because the language of the purchase and sale agreement (PSA) does not call for arbitration in the situation at hand.

  • March 27, 2025

    Judge Vacates Alaska Fracking Lease Cancellation, Says Agency’s Error Is ‘Serious’

    ANCHORAGE, Alaska — A federal judge in Alaska on March 26 issued a judgment vacating the U.S. Department of the Interior’s (DOI) decision to cancel federal fracking leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), enforcing an order in which the judge ruled that the “DOI’s error is serious:  DOI cancelled AIDEA’s leases without following the congressionally-mandated procedure for doing so.”

  • March 25, 2025

    Judge: Underpaid Royalties, Trespass Claims Survive In Mineral Rights Case

    COLUMBUS, Ohio — A federal judge in Ohio on March 24 partially dismissed a lawsuit by mineral rights holders against hydraulic fracturing operators in a dispute over the boundaries of the shale formation from which the fracking companies are extracting natural gas using a procedure called horizontal drilling, ruling that the defendants are liable for unpaid royalties and trespass.

  • March 25, 2025

    Judge Denies Bid To Remand Lease Approval Decision In Offshore Drilling Dispute

    LOS ANGELES — A federal judge in California has denied Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum’s motion to remand to the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) its decision that approved offshore oil and gas drilling leases, ruling that he was not convinced that the BSEE had established an intent to “seriously reconsider” its conclusion as part of ongoing litigation brought by environmental groups that oppose the lease approval.

  • March 19, 2025

    PTAB’s Rejection Of Alternate Claims In Fracking Patent Row Affirmed

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel affirmed findings of the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) that proposed alternate claims in two patents related to fracking were unpatentable as indefinite.

  • March 18, 2025

    Judge Stays Federal Fracking Case As Parties Invoke Trump’s Executive Orders

    CHEYENNE, Wyo. — A federal judge in Wyoming stayed consolidated litigation involving multiple parties who sued the U.S. Department of the Interior during the Biden administration despite opposition from environmental groups that contended that abeyance was not warranted because the case was “inches from the finish line.”

  • March 18, 2025

    Energy Company To Pay $8M, Perform Remediation For Post-Fracking CAA Violations

    COLUMBUS, Ohio — An energy company that was at the helm of an Ohio gas well during a post-fracking incident that resulted in a 20-day release of methane and other harmful substances will pay the United States $8 million in civil penalties and undergo a series of remediation efforts for alleged violations of the Clean Air Act pursuant to a consent decree signed by a federal judge in Ohio.

  • March 14, 2025

    Associations Urge High Court Reversal Of Ruling Finding Nondelegation Violation

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — Telecom provider petitioners and broadband association petitioners filed reply briefs on March 13 in the U.S. Supreme Court, urging reversal of an en banc Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals’ ruling that a subsidy program violates the “private nondelegation doctrine” after the high court granted two petitions for a writ of certiorari and consolidated cases concerning whether Congress violated the nondelegation doctrine by authorizing the Federal Communications Commission to delegate to a private entity.

  • March 10, 2025

    Company Seeks Exit From Shale Antitrust Case Citing ‘Implausibility’ Of Claims

    ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Expand Energy Corp., which is a defendant in antitrust multidistrict litigation related to shale oil, has filed a brief in support of a motion to dismiss in New Mexico federal court arguing that the consolidated class complaint should be dismissed because of the “implausibility of Plaintiffs’ allegations” as they relate to claims that Expand participated in a conspiracy with Wall Street investors, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and others to restrict the production of crude oil.

  • March 07, 2025

    Bill That Would Reverse Ban On Fracking In Maryland Awaits Committee’s Decision

    ANNAPOLIS, Md. — A bill that would reverse a ban on hydraulic fracturing in Maryland has been referred to a committee.

  • March 07, 2025

    Federal Agencies Deny They Violated Law In Approving Offshore Drilling

    LOS ANGELES — Federal agencies have filed an answer in California federal court denying all allegations brought against them by environmental groups who have sued seeking declaratory and injunctive relief on grounds that the agencies’ 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.”

  • March 06, 2025

    Groups Want In On Offshore Fracking Case Filed Against Biden Administration

    LAKE CHARLES, La. — Environmental groups have moved in Louisiana federal court for permission to intervene in a lawsuit brought by states and hydraulic fracturing industry groups that argue that former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s orders that withdrew offshore waters from oil and gas leasing, which were issued just before he left office, are unlawful.

  • March 06, 2025

    9th Circuit Clerk Officially Dismisses Federal Fracking Lease Dispute In Alaska

    SAN FRANCISCO — The clerk of the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has issued an order officially dismissing an appeal brought by hydraulic fracturing proponents against the Biden administration over the delay caused by a temporary halt of the fracking lease program in the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska.  The fracking supporters had moved to voluntarily dismiss their appeal on grounds that the final record of decision (ROD) for ANWR’s Coastal Plain Oil and Gas Program issued by the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) on Dec. 8 “completed DOI’s supplemental environmental review and expressly lifts the Moratorium for the oil and gas program rendering all claims in this appeal moot.”

  • March 06, 2025

    Fracking Operator Removes Fraud Case To Federal Court

    WHEELING, W.Va. — A hydraulic fracturing operator has removed to West Virginia federal court a case brought by a couple who contend that the company committed fraud when it withheld information about a surface use agreement that exists related to property that the couple bought. The surface use agreement stems from a consent decree with a fracking services company that calls for remediating parts of the property.

  • March 05, 2025

    North Dakota Says Biden Administration Energy Plan Violated Multiple Laws

    BISMARCK, N.D. — The state of North Dakota has sued the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) in North Dakota federal court arguing that the resource management plan, which is known as the Amended RMP, issued by the DOI during the Biden administration regarding plans to develop federal land for hydraulic fracturing “violates multiple federal statutes, is arbitrary and capricious, and should be vacated several times over.”

  • March 05, 2025

    Panel Rules Original Fracking Lease Remains Operative Despite Gaps In Activity

    HARRISBURG, Pa. — An appeals panel in Pennsylvania has affirmed a trial court’s ruling in a hydraulic fracturing drilling dispute, finding that the original lease related to land to be used for oil and gas exploration continued to be operative despite gaps in activity on the site in question over a series of years.  As a result, the rights claim asserted by a second drilling company related to the property did not apply, the panel said.