OH Supreme Court Upholds Victory for Beck Energy in Lease Case
A major victory for oil and gas drillers in Ohio was just handed down by the Ohio Supreme Court. You may recall MDN brought you the news in October 2014 that the Seventh District Court of Appeals in Ohio overturned a lower court ruling in the case of Hupp v. Beck Energy Corp (see Major OH Court Victory for Beck Energy & XTO in Lease Case). Brief background: three landowners filed suit claiming that their leases with Beck Energy Corp. were void and should be terminated because Beck never drilled wells on their property and that a provision allowing Beck to pay a nominal delay fee was against public policy. The lower court agreed and granted summary judgment. The court then granted class certification to the lawsuit brought by the three landowners–meaning between 600-700 landowners would also be able to invalidate their leases. On appeal to the Seventh District Court, the case was overturned and decided in favor of Beck Energy (and XTO Energy who had purchased the leases from Beck). It was appealed again, to the OH Supreme Court, and the high court has sided with Beck/XTO…
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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…