8. PKF resigns
On 11 July 2025, five years and four months after being appointed to serve as the Trust's auditor, Pannell Kerr Forster of Texas, P.C. ("PKF") resigned without having completed a single audit. According to BNY, PKF resigned because they could not verify "the well count used to develop the ARO estimate contained in the Trust's Registration on Form S-1".
PKF's resignation came five months after we first documented the well count discrepancies on this website, ten months after we alerted BNY to the well count discrepancies, three years after we first publicly alerted BNY to the ARO discrepancies in the Form S-1 and a former CEO alleged the existence of a scheme to saddle the Trust with improper ARO, and six years after PwC said that they were "unwilling to be associated with the Trust's financial statements".
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On 31 July 2025, BNY announced that it "has taken all actions reasonably available to it" in connection with the ARO calculations and that it has "determined not to take further action at this time".
