Fracking Company Beats One Pennsylvania Claim; Must Face Others

Anadarko Petroleum Corp. must face most of a lawsuit by Pennsylvania’s attorney general accusing it of using deceptive tactics to divide up its fracking operations in anti-competitive ways.

Although Pennsylvania’s unfair trade practices law doesn’t cover antitrust claims generally, it does prohibit deceptive conduct that also harms competition, a divided Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania ruled March 15.

Pennsylvania may therefore proceed with claims that Anadarko drove down royalties to property owners living above the Marcellus Shale—an underground natural gas formation that covers much of the state—by misleading them about “the open market’s true appetite for mineral rights leases.”

The court ...