-
October 29, 2026
CHEYENNE, Wyo. — A Wyoming federal judge partially granted a hydraulic fracturing company’s motion to bifurcate, agreeing to hold separate trials for two fracking site worker plaintiffs who suffered serious burns from equipment explosions and sued the company for negligence, holding that bifurcation into two separate trials would aid in the adjudication of the lawsuit, avoid prejudice against the company and be only minimally prejudicial to a co-defendant; however, the judge refused to sever the suit into two separate cases.
-
October 28, 2026
HOUSTON — Several oilfield services provider companies filed a reply brief in Texas’s 14th Court of Appeals urging it to dissolve a lower court’s temporary injunction barring them from selling oilfield equipment allegedly worth $1.3 million, writing that the court’s ruling in favor of a vendor who claims that the equipment should be returned to it was procedurally improper.
-
October 28, 2026
BAKERSFIELD, Calif. — A California state court judge issued a tentative ruling in three consolidated cases holding that the California Geologic Energy Management Division (CalGEM) improperly implemented an “underground ban” of fracking beginning in 2021 and in 2024 adopted a rule-based ban without “substantial evidence” that such a ban would reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions but denied the petitioners’ requests for declarations approving their fracking-related applications.
-
October 28, 2026
HOUSTON — A business development manager sued her employer in a Texas court alleging injury and retaliation after she filed a workers’ compensation claim in connection with injuries she alleged that she suffered after being told during a training tour of a Wyoming facility to place her head into multiple frac tanks without any personal protective equipment (PPE).
-
October 22, 2026
PORTLAND, Ore. — A Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel dismissed an appeal brought by Native American tribes and environmental groups appearing as intervenors, finding that their challenge to a ruling vacating the U.S. Department of the Interior’s (DOI’s) cancellation of fracking leases belonging to the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority (AIDEA) is now moot because the leases at issue have been “reinstated.”
-
October 21, 2026
FRESNO, Calif. — A federal magistrate judge in California denied a motion by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and other federal parties to stay the deadline for responding to a motion for summary judgment until after a ruling on motions to dismiss in a lawsuit brought by environmental groups challenging federal approval of permits to drill on public land in the San Joaquin Valley, Calif.
-
October 13, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 13 granted the United States’ motion for leave to participate in the Nov. 9 oral argument as amicus curiae in an appeal concerning whether 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 or state law.
-
October 12, 2026
ST. LOUIS — The Interior Board of Indian Appeals (IBIA) properly dismissed for lack of standing an appeal by an oil and gas exploration and production company challenging a decades-old Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) lease assignment, the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI), BIA and the secretary of the Interior argue in an appellee brief asking the Eighth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals to affirm a trial court’s summary judgment ruling in their favor.
-
October 08, 2026
SAN FRANCISCO — The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals consolidated a fourth petition with three previously consolidated ones challenging the reopening of pipelines in California that were shut down following a 2015 oil spill and challenging the jurisdiction of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) to issue permits to reopen them and bifurcated the jurisdictional issue.
-
October 07, 2026
PITTSBURGH — Granting a motion to dismiss in part, a federal judge in Pennsylvania dismissed without prejudice for failure to state a claim one for medical monitoring trust funds brought by minors who sued a hydraulic fracturing operator, alleging that operations have caused them various injuries.
-
October 07, 2026
SANTA FE, N.M. — Two oil trading companies and one trader filed an amended putative class action complaint against several independent shale oil producers as part of multidistrict litigation against an alleged cartel of oil companies accused of conspiring to fix the prices of fracked shale oil and West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil in “collusive orchestration” with the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in violation of federal antitrust laws.
-
October 06, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 5 denied a petition for a writ of certiorari filed by Sunoco Inc. and Sunoco Partners Marketing & Terminals L.P. (together, Sunoco) that asked the high court to decide whether a court is permitted under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23 or Article III of the U.S. Constitution to certify a class and award damages in a case where ascertainability has never been satisfied.
-
October 05, 2026
DALLAS — Investors filed a first amended complaint against a Dallas-based upstream oil and gas company, its officers and an alleged successor company for violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, Securities Exchange Act, Texas Securities Act, breach of fiduciary duty and fraud in a Texas federal court, alleging that the company’s oil and gas offerings were grossly overfunded, which enabled the defendants to misappropriate and misuse more than $15 million at the expense of investors.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.”
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.”
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.”
-
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.