XTO Sues DOJ for Documents Needed in PA Trial over 2010 Spill
Last Thursday XTO Energy sued the U.S. Department of Justice to obtain documents that XTO says may help clear its good name in the vicious (we’d say illegal) criminal lawsuit against it over an accidental spill that happened in Lycoming County, PA in 2010. The DOJ investigated and found XTO did not act criminally and the case was settled. Then, more than three years later, PA’s new Attorney General, Kathleen Kane (now under criminal indictment herself and about to be removed from office) decided she would charge XTO with crimes against the environment–for an accident (see PA AG Abuses Her Authority, Files Criminal Charges Against XTO). Since the feds had already investigated and found no wrongdoing, XTO would like their documents to use in defending themselves in a lawsuit that’s about to begin (see XTO Criminal Trial for Accident Spill in PA Delayed Until 2016). But the feds are dragging their feet and making fishy excuses, like they don’t have enough secretaries to find and copy all of the documents requested. XTO has had to sue the DOJ to force them to go find the documents…
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In a somewhat complicated scam, a former landman for XTO Energy, Steven E. Fisackerly (33 years old) defrauded XTO out of more than $1 million with fake lease deals in the West Virginia Marcellus Shale region. He cooked up bogus documents and passed them off as real, pocketing commissions. He even worked with a supposed/fake mineral rights owner to pocket kickbacks from lease payments sent to the fake rights owner. It was elaborate and convoluted–and ultimately stupid. Fisackerly plead guilty in May and will enter prison on January 4. His sentence? Pay back more than $1 million he defrauded from XTO, and serve 63 months (over 5 years) in federal prison…
Not long after she took office, Pennsylvania’s Democrat Attorney General, Kathleen Kane, brought criminal charges against XTO Energy for an accidental spill in Lycoming County, PA that happened two years before she was in office (see 
An update on a royalty lawsuit we first reported in July. Two Butler County, PA landowners with a combined 245.7 acres of land leased to (and drilled by) XTO Energy have sued XTO claiming the company is breaking the lease agreement by paying royalties below 1/8 of what XTO receives in revenue for the gas (see 
Yesterday the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection announced an agreement/settlement with three Marcellus drillers operating in the northeastern portion of the state. The three–Chesapeake Energy, XTO Energy and SWEPI (i.e. Shell) were fined a collective $374,481 for methane migration related to their drilling activities at three locations (three different counties) in 2011 and 2012. The bad news is that 13 private water wells between the three incidents were negatively affected, along with several local creeks. The good news is that the problems are all fixed. Methane migration is an eminently fixable condition. Here are the details for each fine, including what happened and where it happened…
Two Butler County, PA landowners with a combined 245.7 acres of land leased to XTO Energy have sued XTO claiming that XTO is breaking the lease agreement by paying royalties below 1/8 of what XTO receives in revenue for the gas. So far we’ve heard about Chesapeake Energy being the focus of these types of lawsuits for their shenanigans of inflating post-production costs from the pipeline company and then receiving a “kick back” of investments by the same pipeline company (see 
Belmont County landowner Curtis Wallner doesn’t know what the term “nuisance oil” means in the contract XTO Energy is offering him to lease his 26 acres. The contract says Wallner will receive an eye-popping $8,000 per acre in signing bonus money, plus 20% royalties, MINUS revenue for “non-commercial nuisance oil.” Because XTO can’t or won’t explain it or remove it from the contract, Wallner won’t sign (can’t say that we blame him). So XTO is threatening him that they’ll take his gas anyway via forced pooling… 
Pushing dirt around on drill pads can get very expensive if you don’t have a signed piece of paper in your hand that says, “Mother May I?” XTO Energy, the shale-drilling subsidiary of ExxonMobil, has just learned that the hard way. The federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) along with the U.S. Dept. of Justice announced a settlement yesterday with XTO–fining the company $2.3 million because “fill material” (i.e. dirt and rocks) got into nearby streams and swamps in several West Virginia counties when XTO pushed that dirt and rocks around to construct roads and well pads. Oh, and XTO has to “undo” the damage, spending another $3 million or so. Total price tag of $5.3 million for violating the “Mother May I?” Clean Water Act. If XTO had had the proper paperwork, they wouldn’t have been fined. The jack boots of the feds come down again…