Ft. Worth-based Range Resources’ ugly legal battle with some North Texas landowners and the EPA over alleged groundwater contamination has taken a new turn, with the firm filing a counter-claim against the landowners.
In 2010, Steven and Shyla Lipsky of rural Parker County complained to the Texas Railroad Commission — the agency that oversees drilling in Texas — about natural gas in their water well. The couple believed it was caused by drilling at two nearby Range gas wells.
The Lipsky’s hired a Flower Mound-based firm, Wolf Eagle Environmental, to do water and air testing. Alisa Rich, the owner, encouraged the couple to contact the Environmental Protection Agency, which filed a Dec. 7 emergency order against Range saying gas wells “caused or contributed” to the methane contamination of two water wells in the area, including the Lipsky well.
Range said the gas in the couple’s water well didn’t come from their drilling, and the Texas Railroad Commission sided with Range. However, the EPA filed a lawsuit against the company in January. At the end of June a judge ruled against Range’s motion to throw the case out and put the case on hold while an appeals court considers Range’s effort to block the EPA’s emergency order from back in December.
Also in June the Lipsky’s filed suit against Range directly, seeking $6.5 million for actual damages and mental anguish.
Late last week Range fired back, making a counterclaim in state district court in Parker County (see it below), seeking $3 million in damages from the Lipskys and saying they conspired with Rich to create misleading test results.
Range includes in its filing sections of a deposition taken of Mr. Lipsky where he acknowledges there was gas in the drinking water in years before the drilling occured, and claims a video of Mr. Lipsky lighting water from a hose was misleading because the hose was “… not a hose for water at all, but is used solely for the purpose of venting gas.”
In the filing, Range says it has suffered “significant harm to its well-deserved reputation as a high-quality driller and operator.”
Range claims Rich “serves as a hired gun for plaintiffs’ lawyers who attack the oil and gas industry.”
The Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, which wrote about Rich’s role in a number of high-profile N. Texas drilling disputes, said Rich did not respond to e-mail and voice-mail messages about the suit last week.
The Lipsky’s attorney, Allen Stewart, told the paper that Range’s allegations are “patently false and desperately sad.”
“I look forward to asking a jury to hold Range accountable for harming the Lipskys and then fabricating the far-fetched fairy tale found in their counterclaims,” Stewart told the Star-Telegram. “This just shows that when [there] are billions of dollars under the ground, companies like Range will say and do anything to get their hands on it and never admit that they can and sometimes do hurt others in the process.”
“Range includes in its filing sections of a deposition taken of Mr. Lipsky where he acknowledges there was gas in the drinking water in years before the drilling occured, and claims a video of Mr. Lipsky lighting water from a hose was misleading because the hose was “… not a hose for water at all, but is used solely for the purpose of venting gas.””
If this is proven then Lipsky and the lawyer should be exiled from Texas.
Using forensic chemical analysis, Range proved conclusively that the composition of the natural gas from the water well was different from natural gas produced by its wells. During the boom times of the late ‘70s, I researched a lot of water wells drilled north of Houston to see if we could find a pocket of shallow natural gas. The drillers often encountered gas while drilling water wells.