OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — The U.S. Department of Justice has opened an investigation into possible antitrust violations by Chesapeake Energy Corp.

The Journal Record reports (http://bit.ly/2dwWCJ5 ) the agency has subpoenaed documents related to how the driller pays royalty owners and accounts for oil and gas reserves.

Chesapeake disclosed the subpoena Thursday in a regulatory filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. University of Central Oklahoma economics professor Jeremy Oller, an expert witness on antitrust legal matters, says the Justice Department is likely examining other oil and gas companies as part of the investigation.

The filing says the Justice Department and other agencies have asked Chesapeake for documents, testimony and information related to the company’s oil and gas leases and purchases. The company also received subpoenas from the U.S. Postal Service and state agencies. </s> Chesapeake Energy Corporation's 50 acre campus is seen in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, on April 17, 2012. REUTERS/Steve Sisney

(Reuters) - Chesapeake Energy Corp (CHK.N) said it received a subpoena from the U.S. Department of Justice seeking information on the accounting methodology for the acquisition and classification of oil and gas properties.

Shares of the company fell as much as 9.3 percent in morning trading.

The No. 2 U.S. natural gas producer said in May that it had received subpoenas and demands for documents from the DoJ and some state government agencies in connection with investigations into possible violations of antitrust laws relating to the purchase and lease of oil and natural gas rights.

Chesapeake had also received subpoenas from the DoJ, the U.S. Postal Service and states, seeking information on how the company pays royalties to landowners. (bit.ly/2dnnspG)

The company said in a regulatory filing on Thursday it had engaged in discussions with the DoJ, the U.S. Postal Service and state agency representatives and continue to respond to such subpoenas and demands. (bit.ly/2dnnsWM)

Chesapeake had come under scrutiny when former Chief Executive Aubrey McClendon, who helped transform the U.S. energy industry with shale gas, was investigated and charged in March with conspiring to rig bids to buy oil and natural gas leases in Oklahoma.

McClendon died a day later, when his car slammed into an overpass.

Reuters reported in 2012 that McClendon had taken out more than $1 billion in loans using his personal stakes in thousands of company wells as collateral.

Chesapeake shares were down 4.2 percent at $6.46 on Thursday. Up to Wednesday’s close, they had risen 50 percent this year. </s> A federal judge in Alaska late Friday declared President Trump’s order revoking a sweeping ban on oil and gas drilling in the Arctic and Atlantic Ocean illegal, putting 128 million acres of federal waters off limits to energy exploration.

The decision by U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason represented the third legal setback to Trump’s energy and environmental policies in a single week. On Friday the judge, who was appointed to the federal bench by Barack Obama in 2012, also blocked a land swap the Interior Department arranged that would pave the way for road through wilderness in a major national wildlife refuge in Alaska.

Earlier this week, a federal judge ruled that Interior’s Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service illegally approved two gas drilling plans in western Colorado, on the grounds that officials did not adequately analyze their wildlife and climate impacts.

Trump’s rollbacks of Obama-era conservation policies have suffered nearly two dozen setbacks in federal court, largely on procedural grounds. While the administration is appealing many of these decisions, and holds an advantage if the cases reach the Supreme Court, the rulings have slowed the president’s drive to expand fossil fuel production in the United States.

Earlier this month, for example, a federal judge halted drilling on more than 300,000 acres of oil and gas leases in Wyoming. And Friday’s decision on offshore drilling could affect a five-year leasing plan the administration plans to issue this summer, as well as block the six offshore lease sales it proposed to schedule in the Arctic Ocean starting as early as this year.

“President Trump’s lawlessness is catching up with him,” Erik Grafe, the lead attorney from Earthjustice who argued to reinstate Obama’s leasing withdrawals in the Arctic and Atlantic, said in a statement Friday. “The judge’s ruling today shows that the president can not just trample on the constitution to do the bidding of his cronies in the fossil fuel industry at the expense of our oceans, wildlife, and climate.”

The Interior Department could not be immediately reached for comment.

In her Friday ruling, Gleason wrote that the law in which Congress gave the president authority over offshore drilling — the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act — expressly allows for leasing withdrawals but does not state that a subsequent president can revoke those withdrawals without congressional approval.

“As a result, the previous three withdrawals issued on January 27, 2015 and December 20, 2016 will remain in full force and effect unless and until revoked by Congress,” she wrote.

In a separate decision earlier in the day, Gleason found that then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke did not provide sufficient justification for reversing the government’s stance on whether to allow a small, remote Alaska town to construct a road through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge.

Residents of King Cove have argued for years that they need to bisect the refuge, which has been protected for decades and provides a critical rest stop for migratory waterfowl, to ease medical situations under rough weather. Opponents counter that the federal government has provided millions in funding to provide town residents with alternative forms of transport, and that a road would fragment critical habitat.

“Here, the Secretary’s failure to acknowledge the change in agency policy and his failure to provide a reasoned explanation for that change in policy are serious errors,” Gleason wrote.

The third adverse decision the administration received this week came in a ruling from U.S. District Judge Lewis T. Babcock, a Ronald Reagan appointee. A coalition of environmental groups had challenged adjacent plans to drill a total of 171 wells in Colorado’s North Fork Valley, which provides key habitat for elk and mule deer.
The Obama administration through the United States Department of Justice sends a subpoena to natural gas giant Chesapeake Energy regarding the accounting methods for its oil and gas properties.