Shareholder

Chesapeake Energy Corp. has prevailed in two lawsuits, including one filed by shareholders, but it is facing a criminal trial after a Michigan judge ruled Wednesday there was enough evidence that it colluded with Encana Corp. to rig a land auction in 2010.

Pressured by shareholders, ExxonMobil Corp. agreed Thursday to publish, for the first time ever, a carbon asset risk report describing how it assesses the risks of stranded assets from climate change.

Hess Corp. has ended a proxy battle with major shareholder Elliott Management Corp. (4.4%) by agreeing to appoint three Elliott-backed nominees to its board of directors. The reconstituted board would comprise 14 members; nine were replaced following the annual meeting Thursday. The activist hedge fund, which had claimed that the company was mismanaged and controlled by Hess family interests, agreed to support five Hess nominees. The board now will be reelected every year instead of every three. Elliott also led the charge to split the chairman and CEO roles, now held by John Hess, the son of the company’s founder, and it has forced the company to sell its downstream arm and monetize Bakken Shale midstream assets.

An Ohio judge has ruled that landowners who signed oil and natural gas leases with Chesapeake Exploration LLC have the right to accept better offers from competitors, as long as the original lease is in the primary term, drilling hasn’t started and Chesapeake fails to match the offer.

Late Friday the government of Canada gave its nod to the deal, which has shareholder approvals but needs OKs from the U.S. and British governments.

Gulf Coast petrochemicals maker TPC Group Inc. on Monday agreed to be taken private by First Reserve Corp. and SK Capital Partners in a cash-and-debt transaction valued at $850 million.

Responding in part to the public outcry over hydraulic fracturing (fracking), ASTM International has created a subcommittee to develop consensus standards that would provide best practices for the fracking of oil and natural gas wells in shale formations.

Chesapeake Energy Corp. CEO Aubrey McClendon and National Oilwell Varco CEO Pete Miller, the lead independent director of the board, late Tuesday sent a letter to shareholders addressing”certain issues” raised last week by John Liu, the City of New York’s comptroller, who oversees the city’s pension funds.

California regulators reiterated on Thursday their strong reliance on energy efficiency programs and the need to provide utility shareholder incentives to expand the efforts. In doing so they ignored calls from consumer advocates to end the rewards to shareholders.