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October 01, 2026
WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. — A federal judge in Pennsylvania dismissed with prejudice two consolidated complaints involving hydraulic fracturing lease disputes, holding that the plaintiff lessors’ claims of antitrust and racketeering violations fail because they did not adequately allege that reduced royalties were connected to competitive harm or the existence of a coordinated scheme.
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October 01, 2026
HARRISBURG, Pa. — Going “one step further” than the response in opposition, a Pennsylvania federal judge held that a motion filed by the last remaining defendant in a lawsuit brought by the estate of a man who died while working at a natural gas drilling site to compel genetic testing of two children listed as beneficiaries was “meritless” and precluded by limitations prescribed by Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 35.
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October 01, 2026
AUSTIN, Texas — A federal judge in Texas rejected in part a magistrate’s report recommending dismissal of an oil and gas engineering, consulting and staffing company’s claims alleging misappropriation of trade secrets under the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA) and the Texas Uniform Trade Secrets Act (TUTSA) against an oil and gas exploration and production company and its employee, holding that the plaintiff has sufficiently alleged that its trade secrets relate to a product or service in interstate commerce.
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October 01, 2026
Customers affected by oil prices filed two separate putative class complaints, one in New York federal court and one in Delaware federal court, accusing shale oil producers of violating antitrust laws and conspiring since 2021 to fix gas prices by allegedly coordinating “production decisions” and slowing production of shale oil from hydraulic fracturing to rates “that are lower than would be seen in a competitive market, despite high oil prices and healthy global demand.”
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September 29, 2026
HARRISBURG, Pa. — The last remaining defendant in a lawsuit filed by the estate of a man who died while working at a fracking site told a Pennsylvania federal judge that it still wants to pursue a motion to compel genetic testing despite the other movants leaving the case following a summary judgment order, a dismissal and a settlement.
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September 29, 2026
NEW ORLEANS — Finding that a Pugh clause in a mineral lease “must clearly and unequivocally express the intent to contract out of” Louisiana’s presumption of indivisibility, the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court’s dismissal of claims brought against a hydraulic fracturing operator by a mineral rights owner seeking termination of a portion of a larger lease that had been unitized by the state Conservation commissioner.
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September 29, 2026
ST. LOUIS — A pair of oil and gas fracking companies filed an emergency motion to recall an Eighth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals mandate in a case deciding how to calculate deductions on natural gas royalties, saying the court erroneously issued it while petitions for rehearing remained pending in a case over how to calculate deductions on natural gas royalties and said that if the court believed that an amended opinion mooted the existing petitions, it should have at least allowed for the filing of new ones.
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September 25, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Individuals with ownership interests in Indian trust lands on a North Dakota reservation filed a petition for a writ of certiorari in the U.S. Supreme Court asking the justices to decide in a long-running putative class pipeline dispute whether they have “a federal common-law cause of action for trespass on their allotments.”
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September 25, 2026
SAN ANTONIO — A Texas appellate court affirmed a lower court’s ruling resolving a dispute over the deed concerning mineral interests at a ranch at which hydraulic fracturing takes place, writing that the owner of a nonparticipating royalty interest (NPRI) could not claim a right to royalties from any future lease or, in the absence of a lease, be treated as a co-tenant entitled to royalties.
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September 23, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The United States in an amicus curiae brief tells the U.S. Supreme Court that the compensation a private pipeline company must pay in an eminent domain action carried out under the Natural Gas Act is controlled by the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and not state law.
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September 16, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Sunoco Inc. and Sunoco Partners Marketing & Terminals L.P. (together, Sunoco) filed a reply brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to grant certiorari and resolve two circuit splits by reviewing the 10th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals’ affirmance of a $100 million judgment in favor of an oil-well interest class despite the class’s alleged inability to ascertain the identity of thousands of class members, an argument that the respondent contends is based on “false premises.”
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September 16, 2026
CHEYENNE, Wyo. — A Wyoming federal judge granted a hydraulic fracturing company’s partial motion for summary judgment as to punitive damages sought by two fracking site workers who suffered serious burns from equipment explosions and sued the company for negligence, finding that there is no dispute that the company’s conduct was not willful or wanton misconduct warranting an award of punitive damages.
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September 11, 2026
DAYTON, Ohio — An Ohio federal magistrate judge denied a motion by a company that operates hydraulic fracturing pumps to retransfer its breach of contract lawsuit against a manufacturer that allegedly sold it defective custom pump frames back to the Western District of Oklahoma, finding the plaintiff didn’t show that the Oklahoma federal court erred by transferring the case to Ohio, where a related, previously filed suit was pending.
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September 04, 2026
DENVER — A 10th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel dismissed two family members’ appeal of a contempt order to show cause issued against them for bringing claims related to alleged underpayment of mineral rights royalties against companies that operate hydraulically fractured wells in Oklahoma that were allegedly released by a related class action settlement, writing that the lower court had not yet entered a final, appealable ruling finding contempt or imposing a sanction.
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September 04, 2026
ST. LOUIS — An Eighth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel ignored Arkansas Supreme Court precedent and misapplied a statutory amendment in such a way that complying with the ruling will require violating other parts of the statute and will negatively impact every natural gas well in the state, companies tell the court in seeking en banc rehearing.
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September 04, 2026
PITTSBURGH — A split Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania panel affirmed a trial court’s decision to quash a land-use appeal, holding that objectors to a proposed gas well pad failed to show that they lived sufficiently close to the site or that they were aggrieved under the Pennsylvania Municipalities Planning Code (MPC) to confer standing.
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September 03, 2026
PITTSBURGH — An oil and gas producer sued by a class of leaseholders seeking allegedly unpaid royalties didn’t abandon its arbitration rights related to unnamed class members when it waited until after class certification to move to compel arbitration against those with arbitration clauses in their leases, a Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled in an interlocutory appeal, vacating the trial court’s ruling and remanding.
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September 03, 2026
LOS ANGELES — A federal judge in California dismissed a second amended complaint (SAC) and denied leave to file a third amended complaint in a case brought by two environmental groups that allege that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s (BOEM) review of a development and production plan (DPP) that preceded the March 2026 resumption of onshore pipelines that are part of the Santa Ynez Unit (SYU) off the shore of California violated the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA) and, alternatively, the Administrative Procedure Act (APA).
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September 02, 2026
TOPEKA, Kan. — A split Kansas Court of Appeals panel overturned a trial court’s ruling that a 2008 judgment resolving a class action against an oil company for underpayment of mineral rights royalties from fracking had become “dormant” and unenforceable, with the majority writing that the court erroneously found the judgment was dormant despite “the continuing supervisory nature of the court’s judgment,” while a dissenting judge said the majority’s approach was “overbroad.”
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September 02, 2026
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — A lawsuit by environmental groups challenging President Donald J. Trump’s executive order (EO) reopening areas of the outer continental shelf (OCS) fails to show “substantial risk of imminent harm” off the shores of Alaska, a federal judge in that state ruled, granting the federal government parties’ motion to dismiss.
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September 01, 2026
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — A federal judge in Alaska vacated a 2025 decision by the secretary of the Interior that approved a land exchange between the secretary and a for-profit corporation to facilitate a road through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge which the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) stated at the time was part of the decision to officially open roughly 1,563,500 acres in the coastal plain of Alaska for oil and gas development.
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September 01, 2026
NEW ORLEANS — A federal judge in Louisiana stayed enforcement of judgment and approved an $8,350,000 supersedeas bond pending appeal after energy investment fund entities were found to owe damages to an oil and gas company for unpaid operating and decommissioning expenses related to federal leases in the Gulf of Mexico.
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August 31, 2026
PHILADELPHIA — A federal court in Pennsylvania correctly dismissed with prejudice claims by oil and gas lessors alleging they were defrauded of their royalties after the lessors were given two opportunities to amend their claims alleging an anticompetitive scheme to develop natural gas wells and gathering systems in and around the Marcellus Shale and failed to state viable claims, oil and gas companies argue in three appellee briefs filed in the Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.
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August 28, 2026
DENVER — Arguing that federal jurisdiction is lacking, a Native American tribe and related entities urged the 10th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals to affirm a lower court’s dismissal of a contractor’s latest suit in a long-running dispute over revenue the contractor says he was owed for work he performed pursuant to oil and gas leases on tribal lands.
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August 27, 2026
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — The California Regional Water Quality Control Board and Sable Offshore Corp. have reached a settlement in principle regarding a suit in state court in which the board argued that Sable intentionally ignored its obligations under the California Water Code to apply to the board for permits before proposing to discharge waste that could affect the water quality of the state, according to a minute order issued by the court.