Court

Rice Energy Inc. said a fire at its Papa Bear well pad in Washington County, PA, over the holiday weekend damaged six completion pumps. The equipment fire was reported at 4 p.m. EST on Sunday and was extinguished by 5:34 p.m., Rice said. There were no injuries. The fire damaged six of 20 pumps at the pad in Somerset Township, but no other equipment was damaged. Rice said equipment failure was to blame, adding that there was no explosion and stressing that it was not a well control incident. The company is currently working with regulators to determine the exact cause. Rice also met with area residents to address the incident.

A judge on the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals ruled that a dispute between a unit of Norway’s Statoil ASA and four counties over nearly $7 million in property taxes the company claims it overpaid must be handled in the county court system.

A federal judge in Texas is allowing ExxonMobil to depose Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey in Dallas next month regarding a wide-ranging investigation of the supermajor. New York’s Eric Schneiderman also was told to make himself “available” for testimony on Dec. 13.

Three days after two industry groups had done the same, Montana and Wyoming filed a separate lawsuit last week against the Interior Department (DOI) over a final rule to reduce venting and flaring from oil and gas operations on public and tribal lands.

Getting called out by FERC’s Office of Enforcement (OE) for alleged market manipulation will give any energy company and its lawyers heartburn, but the blow to the gut is particularly acute when it’s a natural gas rather than a power case.

Two weeks before Constitution Pipeline LLC will argue in appellate court that New York State regulators are purposely holding up its proposed Marcellus Shale natural gas pipeline by denying a crucial water permit, the two sides in the case took swipes at each other through the filing of final legal briefs last month.

A federal bankruptcy court judge in Manhattan granted a request by Sabine Oil & Gas Corp. and its subsidiaries to modify the amount of some claims by its creditors, and agreed to disallow and expunge other claims, including duplicates and those with insufficient documentation.

ExxonMobil Corp. planned an immediate appeal after the New York Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered the supermajor’s auditor to comply with a subpoena to hand over documents about its accounting practices.

With implications for oil/natural gas drilling as well as mining, the U.S. District Court for Colorado on Tuesday agreed with various environmental groups that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) needs to protect two threatened wildflowers that live solely on an oil shale formation in Colorado and Utah.