Oil Companies Fight Lawsuit After 2016 Pawnee Earthquake

A Pawnee County District Court Judge has set a late February hearing as a lawsuit filed after the 5.8 magnitude earthquake in Pawnee in 2016 progresses.

The suit filed by Johnny Lee and Janice Marie Bryant was one of the first to be filed following the quake that caused extensive damage to homes and businesses in Pawnee. It blamed the quake on oil and gas activity and the wastewater injection wells in the region.

Judge Patrick Pickerill responded last week to a motion by the defendants, Eagle Road Oil LLC, Cummings Oil Company and 25 various John Does. He set a date of Feb. 28 for a scheduling conference to hold a hearing on a request by the oil companies to have the lawsuit dismissed.

But attorney Scott Poynter, a Little Rock, Arkansas lawyer hired to represent the Bryants is fighting the motion, asking the court to allow him to  present evidence showing the earthquake on Sept. 3, 2016 was caused by the oil and gas industry activity.

“Whether they were human-made and whether they occurred as a result of abnormally dangerous activities engaged in by the Defendants, are questions of fact yet to be determined after evidence is presented,” he argued. “Plaintiffs have not been given the opportunity to develop fully the factual and expert-related evidence through full-blown discovery and present that evidence to the Court for consideration.”

The lawsuit claimed a Cummings Oil-operated wastewater disposal well near Pawnee was a cause of the quake. It injected on average 126,000 barrels of wastewater a month through the Rogers 1-13D well and into the Arbuckle Formation near the city.

“The 5.8m earthquake that struck Pawnee was human-made and caused by wastewater injection pollution,” stated the lawsuit. “All of these earthquakes, which are continuing, were caused by Defendants’ pollution of the environment around Pawnee through their disposal of fracking wastewater within injection wells.”

Poynter argued it would be “clearly premature” for the Court to make the determination.