Former executives of one of Canada’s largest energy companies face regulatory action for allegedly artificially lowering the company’s operating costs over the course of years, defrauding investors, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said Wednesday.
In a complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, the government in SEC v. Penn West Petroleum, 17-cv-04866, alleges that former executives at Penn West Petroleum, now known as Obsidian Energy Ltd., moved hundreds of millions of dollars of operating expenses to capital accounts, dropping its operating cost by as much as 20 percent during the more than two years the alleged scheme occurred.
