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August 10, 2026
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio property owners and a drilling company, the parties that remained in a mineral rights case first filed in a federal court in Ohio in 2018, jointly stipulated to dismissal with prejudice after notifying the court that they negotiated an undisclosed settlement.
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August 07, 2026
PITTSBURGH — A federal judge in Pennsylvania on Aug. 6 vacated a March 2026 judgment order entered in a class lawsuit over hydraulic fracturing royalties after clarifying that a summary judgment order for the defendant issued that same day as the judgment did not fully resolve all claims.
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August 07, 2026
MINOT, N.D. — A jury trial was reset for Oct. 26 in a federal court in North Dakota in a case brought by a couple in that state who seek compensatory and punitive damages for a traumatic brain injury and other ailments suffered when the husband was injured by exploding storage tanks at a hydraulic fracturing site while performing a welding job on the connected pipes.
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August 07, 2026
AUSTIN, Texas — A federal judge in Texas, ruling on multiple summary judgment motions in a royalty dispute, granted summary judgment to a hydraulic fracturing operator on conversion and quiet title claims brought by a royalty interest company that entered into an oil, gas and mineral lease for 640 acres in Loving County, Texas, that entitled it to receive royalties from production.
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August 06, 2026
FORT WORTH, Texas — A federal judge in Texas dismissed with prejudice following a settlement a lawsuit alleging that a supplier of proppants used in hydraulic fracturing misappropriated trade secrets by accessing proprietary software that an information technology services company developed and managed for the supplier’s operations.
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August 06, 2026
OKLAHOMA CITY — A frac technician’s lawsuit against a well services company and the fracking operator for a slip-and-fall incident and alleged discrimination that followed ended after the worker accepted a $200,000 offer of judgment from Rocanda USA Inc., according to the judgment entered in a federal court in Oklahoma.
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August 05, 2026
PITTSBURGH — A federal magistrate judge in Pennsylvania excluded five individuals and a sewer authority from a certified class in a long-running royalty dispute between landowners and a hydraulic fracturing company based on the parties’ agreement reached after the fracking company moved to compel arbitration.
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August 05, 2026
COLUMBUS, Ohio — A hydraulic fracturing company, a land management company and an insurance company that issued a surety on an injunction bond have agreed to dismiss claims and counterclaims filed in a mineral rights dispute in a federal court in Ohio pursuant to a settlement agreement and purchase and sale agreement reached among the parties.
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August 05, 2026
SAN FRANCISCO — California filed a petition for review in the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, arguing that a June 25 order by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) granting Sable Offshore Corp. a special permit allowing for the operation of two pipelines in California is unlawful.
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August 04, 2026
SAN FRANCISCO — A May U.S. Supreme Court opinion in Flowers Foods, Inc. v. Brock, on the Federal Arbitration Act’s (FAA) exemption for workers who transport goods on an intrastate leg of an interstate journey doesn’t impact the Pipeline Safety Act’s (PSA) definition of “interstate commerce” and the application of Southern Pacific Pipe Lines v. U.S. Department of Transportation, in which the District of Columbia Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals discussed regulation and classification of interstate and intrastate pipelines, California argues in the latest supplemental brief filed in the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals after oral argument was heard in a consolidated case over the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration’s (PHMSA) authority to restart pipelines running through California.
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July 29, 2026
LOS ANGELES — Saying that the Defense Production Act (DPA) “contains no provision indicating that it displaces judicial power or state power,” the state of California filed an amended complaint against Secretary of Energy Chris Wright and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) in California federal court, arguing that the court should vacate Wright’s order directing Sable Offshore Corp. and an affiliate to resume operating the Santa Ynez Unit (SYU) and the Santa Ynez Pipeline System (SYPS) because he exceeded his authority.
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July 23, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court on July 22 granted an oil-well interest class an extra month to respond to a petition by Sunoco Inc. and Sunoco Partners Marketing & Terminals L.P. (together, Sunoco) that asks 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.
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July 14, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Saying that it is “in the public interest,” President Donald J. Trump on July 13 issued two proclamations shrinking the size of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante (GSE) national monuments by nearly 3 million acres, citing his authority under the Antiquities Act over an area that has been the subject of ongoing dispute across presidential administrations and may have implications for hydraulic fracturing.
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July 13, 2026
HOUSTON — A Texas appellate court reversed a trial court's denial of the special appearance of seven nonresident defendants in a dispute over an oil and gas development agreement, holding that the forum selection clause did not provide a basis for exercising personal jurisdiction over the nonsignatories because the plaintiff failed to establish that the contract's corporate signatory was the alter ego of one defendant or that reverse piercing extended the clause to the remaining corporate defendants.
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July 13, 2026
HARRISBURG, Pa. — A Pennsylvania Superior Court panel ruled that a trial court erred as a matter of law when it granted summary judgment to an oil and gas company in a dispute over access to land for drilling because an implied easement allowing the oil and gas company to use landowners’ property to access an underlying mineral estate requires proof that use of the land is “strictly necessary,” not merely that it is “reasonable.”
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July 13, 2026
DENVER — The Colorado Supreme Court ruled that the economic loss rule does not bar a hydraulic fracturing company’s fraud claim in its dispute with a contractor because the interrelated contracts doctrine does not apply, the alleged fraud occurred before the parties entered a series of contracts for the construction of a fracking wastewater treatment facility and the contractor induced the fracking company to sign the contracts at issue.
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July 13, 2026
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The federal judge overseeing the antitrust multidistrict litigation related to shale oil has denied Kansas’ bid to intervene in the MDL, ruling that the state “does not identify a protectable interest that will be impaired” by the litigation and holding that the state does not have a “claim that shares a common question of law or fact with the main action.”
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July 10, 2026
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — A federal judge in Alaska granted stipulated dismissal of two lawsuits that separately challenged the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) 2024 record of decision (ROD) issued during the Biden administration that restricted hydraulic fracturing in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) after BLM reached a settlement with the plaintiffs, admitting that the 2024 ROD violated the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 by “preventing meaningful leasing, exploration, and development of oil and gas on the Coastal Plain, as Congress mandated.”
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July 09, 2026
SAN FRANCISCO — Attorneys for the state of California and environmental groups asked a panel of the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals to vacate orders issued by the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) that restarted the Las Flores Pipelines on grounds that the agency lacks jurisdiction, while an attorney for the pipeline company argued that PHMSA has jurisdiction under federal law and an attorney for the federal government said the agency has since issued a new special permit that supersedes the orders the state challenges, rendering the case moot.
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June 26, 2026
DENVER — Ruling that a lower court’s dismissal of a challenge to presidential proclamations related to the boundaries of two national monuments was based on a “flawed view of sovereign immunity’s ultra vires exception,” a divided panel of the 10th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals remanded a long-running case, reviving a dispute over presidential authority under the Antiquities Act in a case that may have implications for hydraulic fracturing.
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June 16, 2026
PITTSBURGH — A hydraulic fracturing company has moved in Pennsylvania federal court to compel arbitration in a long-running class action royalty dispute with landowners, arguing that the district “[c]ourt should honor the plain language of the Arbitration Leases” and “compel any royalty owners asserting claims under [those leases] to arbitration.” The fracking operator also says the arbitration leases and the leaseholders should be excluded from the class.
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June 08, 2026
EASTLAND, Texas — A Texas appellate panel has reversed and remanded a summary judgment ruling in favor of an energy company in a breach of contract case, ruling that a genuine issue of material fact exists regarding the ownership of overriding royalty interests (ORRIs) two brothers claim they inherited from their father.
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June 08, 2026
SEATTLE — In a reply brief supporting dismissal of a lawsuit challenging President Donald J. Trump’s executive order titled “Declaring a National Energy Emergency,” Trump and the other federal defendants argue that the case in Washington federal court should be dismissed because the states that brought the suit lack standing and their amended complaint is “an attack on guidance and policy documents that do not, in and of themselves, injure the states.”
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June 05, 2026
LOS ANGELES — Environmental groups filed a second amended complaint against Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum and others on June 4 after a California federal judge dismissed their previous complaint for lack of jurisdiction and lack of standing but gave them “one more chance” to remedy those deficiencies related to allegations that the defendants violated federal law with regard to offshore oil and gas activities at the Santa Ynez Unit (SYU).
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June 05, 2026
BISMARCK, N.D. — A federal judge in North Dakota has upheld the dismissal of Prima Exploration Inc.’s challenge to a decades-old Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) lease determination, ruling that the company lacked standing to pursue its claims because it could not establish a legally protected interest in the disputed oil and gas lease.