Seems normal folks aren’t the only ones getting screwed.
Read in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram about Ed Bass and others suing Chesapeake over royalties, or lack thereof. And Julie Wilson had no comment?? What’s the world coming to?
They may want to brush up on their “good neighbor” campaign.
Fort Worth investor Ed Bass and more than a dozen other landowners in southern Tarrant County have sued units of Chesapeake Energy in federal court in Dallas, accusing the Barnett Shale's second-largest producer of cheating them out of millions of dollars in royalties.
According to the lawsuit, the companies improperly deducted production costs, expressly forbidden by the leases, and used "sham transactions" with two other Chesapeake affiliates to set a below-market price on which royalties were paid, also a breach of lease terms.
It's not the first time Chesapeake has been sued over royalty payments.
In September, it agreed to pay Dallas/Fort Worth Airport more than $5.3 million in additional royalties after nearly three years of litigation over the sales price for gas used by Chesapeake and other issues.
In 2010, Fort Worth resident Robyn Coffey sued Chesapeake, saying its royalty payments were based on a "fictitious price" for natural gas produced in the White Lake Hills area in east Fort Worth.
Under the lease terms, Chesapeake is not allowed to pass along "any part of the costs or expenses" of producing, gathering, transporting or processing gas, the suit states.
The leases require the owners to bear their share of certain expenses up to 75 cents per 1,000 cubic feet (mcf) "under certain conditions," but those conditions never applied, it says.
Chesapeake imposed costs on the owners exceeding 75 cents per mcf, the suit says.
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