Landowner and mineral owner (that includes you, lessee): Under ETC Texas Pipeline, Ltd. v. Ageron Energy, LLC, your right to sue for damages for tort or trespass could pass into history before you even know you have a claim....more
2/29/2024
/ Article III ,
Damages ,
Energy Policy ,
Injury-in-Fact ,
Land Owners ,
Mineral Exploration ,
Mineral Extraction ,
Mineral Leases ,
Mineral Rights ,
Oil & Gas ,
Standing ,
Tort ,
Trespass
In Texas, no. Read on to learn why. In Nortex Minerals LP v. Blackbeard Operating LLC et al, the question was the meaning of this limited assignment provision in the “Alliance Leases”, oil and gas leases covering 27,000 acres...more
Parish of Plaquemines v. Northcoast Oil Co. is yet another remand of yet another of the 43 suits filed in state courts against a legion of oil and gas companies under the Louisiana’s State and Local Coastal Resources...more
California has passed Senate Bill 1137, which will prohibit drilling of new oil and gas wells and reworking of existing wells in certain areas.
Here is SB 1137 in legislativese (analysis comes first, then the text)...more
7/19/2023
/ Ballot Measures ,
California ,
Energy Policy ,
Energy Reform ,
Infrastructure ,
Mineral Exploration ,
Mineral Extraction ,
Oil & Gas ,
Proposed Legislation ,
Regulatory Agenda ,
Well Drilling
The Austin Court of Appeals has ruled in Texas Railroad Commission et al v. Opiela, the dispute over a permit for a horizontal well under a Production Sharing Agreement. We reported on the result in the trial court. Here are...more
Imagine these facts in a force majeure dispute (as presented in Point Energy Partners Permian LLC et al. v. MRC Permian Company).
Lessee (MRC) invokes the force majeure provision of an oil and gas lease, asserting that...more
5/10/2023
/ Civil Conspiracy ,
Constructive Trusts ,
Force Majeure Clause ,
Mineral Exploration ,
Mineral Extraction ,
Mineral Leases ,
Mineral Rights ,
Oil & Gas ,
Repudiation ,
Tortious Interference ,
Trespass ,
Well Drilling
The issue in QBE Syndicate 1036 v. Compass Minerals Louisiana, LLC was whether the scope of the Louisiana Oilfield Indemnification Act applies to operations involving salt mining?
QBE issued a commercial general...more
If you have ever wondered how many ways a cocktail of stupidity*, treachery and feckless government can inflict financial harm on the undeserving, including the citizens the feckless government leaders are supposed to serve,...more
Is it worth spending extra dollars, days, and windshield time to discover what mischief your oil and gas operator might be making on your property? The landowner-plaintiffs in Mustafa v. Americo Energy would certainly say so....more
The question in litigation is usually “WHAT”: what happened, what contract was breached, what did someone do or fail to do, and so on. In Hughes v. CJM Resources, LP, the question was, “WHO” had the right to file the suit in...more
5/12/2022
/ Breach of Contract ,
Contract Terms ,
Critical Infrastructure Sectors ,
Deeds ,
Energy Projects ,
Mineral Exploration ,
Mineral Extraction ,
Mining ,
Natural Resources ,
Notice of Right to Sue ,
Oil & Gas ,
Standing
[Updated] The North Dakota Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on Thursday to consider who owns the right to the porous spaces within subsurface rock formations. The issue is over Senate Bill 2344, passed by the...more
Foote and Cypert v. Texcel Exploration and Decker determined that cattle loitering uninvited around a well and tank battery are trespassers, not licensees.
How it happened -
Foote arranged with Yates to graze 650 head...more
Ammonite Oil and Gas Corporation v. Railroad Commission of Texas illustrates the difficulties faced by lessees attempting to force-pool a tract under the Mineral Interest Pooling Act. In this case, the applicant Ammonite...more
Let’s begin with a question: Master service agreements (“MSA’s” in the trade), once agreed upon, often remain in force for years. As time passes and circumstances change, the parties amend, sometimes losing sight of the...more
The Texas Supreme Court in Concho Resources, Inc. v. Ellison enforced a boundary stipulation involving an unambiguous deed about which there had been no dispute. You can refer to our earlier post to understand the facts, the...more
As Humpty Dumpty would have said to Alice if he were Justice Dumpty of the Texas Supreme Court, the term means whatever the parties to an oil and gas lease say it means, neither more nor less. In Sundown Energy LP, et al. v....more
The Supreme Court of Texas has ruled that oil and gas leases under consideration in BlueStone Natural Resources II, LLC v. Walker Murray Randle, et al. did not permit deduction of postproduction costs from sales proceeds...more
In Susan Davis Van Dyke et al. v. The Navigator Group. et al., the Eastland court of appeals applied recent fixed-versus-floating NPRI principles to a double-fraction mineral interest reservation....more
The question in Cannisnia Plantation, LLC v. Cecil Blount Farms, LLC was whether a well was drilled in good faith in order to interrupt the running of prescription on a Louisiana mineral servitude....more
Here we continue our discussion of the Texas Supreme Court’s opinion in Piranha Partners et al. v. Joe B. Neuhoff et al. determining that an assignment of an overriding royalty in minerals unambiguously conveyed the override...more
Ever since the Sabine Oil and Gas Corp. bankruptcy (the top of the first, If it were baseball), where a New York court construed Texas property law to hold that a gathering agreement was not a covenant running with the land,...more
Our sympathies go out to those in the oilfield services industry in Texas—it looks like you got a lump of coal. In Mesa Southern CWS Acquisition v. Deep Energy Exploration Partners the Houston Court of Appeals upended the...more
12/31/2019
/ Contract Terms ,
Liens ,
Master Service Agreement ,
Mineral Exploration ,
Mineral Leases ,
Minerals ,
Oil & Gas ,
Public Policy ,
Void and Unenforceable ,
Waiver of Rights ,
Waivers ,
Well Drilling
Until Monarch Midstream v. Badlands Energy, midstream companies facing rejection of their contracts in a producer’s bankruptcy were left with Abraham Lincoln’s least favorite negotiating option: If the both law and the facts...more
In Town of Flower Mound v. Eagle Ridge Operating LLC, an operator’s injunction against enforcement of a local ordinance was dissolved. EagleRidge operates gas wells in the Flower Mound. A Town ordinance prohibits work on gas...more
9/12/2019
/ Appeals ,
Injunctions ,
Local Ordinance ,
Mineral Exploration ,
Mineral Extraction ,
Motion to Dissolve ,
Motion To Enjoin ,
Real Estate Market ,
Variances ,
Water ,
Well Drilling
In Barrow-Shaver Resources Company v. Carrizo Oil & Gas, Inc the Supreme Court of Texas has held again, here in a consent-to-assign dispute, that a contract means what the words say, even if in negotiations a landman said...more