According to the SEC: "The SEC's complaint alleges that Penn West Petroleum Ltd. ... fraudulently moved hundreds of millions of dollars in expenses from operating expense accounts to capital expenditure accounts. This alleged fraudulent movement caused Penn West to artificially reduce its operating costs by as much as 20 percent in certain periods, which falsely improved reported metrics for oil extraction efficiency and profitability."

According to the SEC: "This action involves violations of the antifraud, recordkeeping, internal controls, and reporting provisions of the federal securities laws arising from a multi-year accounting fraud scheme orchestrated and implemented by the Defendants."

According to a litigation release issued November 20, 2017: "A Canadian-based oil and gas company has agreed to pay $8.5 million in civil penalties to settle charges brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission in June 2017 arising from an extensive, multi-year accounting fraud."

On June 28, 2017, the SEC charged a Canadian-based oil and gas company and three of its former top finance executives for their roles in an extensive, multi-year accounting fraud, stating in a litigation release: "According to the SEC's complaint...they [former finance executives] manipulated the company's operating expenses in order to lower a key publicly reported metric concerning the cost of oil extraction and processing needed to sell a barrel of oil. Penn West allegedly created an internal budget target representing the amount it would improperly move in its publicly-reported financial statements and gave the illusion that it was spending less money to get oil of out the ground."