News & Analysis as of

Mineral Exploration Well Drilling

Gray Reed

California Brings Legislative Muscle To Its Attack on Oil Drilling

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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

Gray Reed

Court of Appeals Rules on Texas PSA Well Permit

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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

Gray Reed

Lessee Can’t Satisfy Texas Supreme Court’s Force Majeure Requirements

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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

Gray Reed

LOIA Does Not Apply to a Salt Mine Operation

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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

Gray Reed

City of Dallas Owes $33+ Million for Drilling Permit Denials

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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

Gray Reed

Fair and Reasonable Offer Required Before Force-Pooling in Texas

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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

Houston Harbaugh, P.C.

Texas Appellate Court Rules that Lease Terminated Due to Twelve Months of Non-Production

Houston Harbaugh, P.C. on

The modern producing gas well is a sophisticated and complex piece of equipment. The basic well head itself consists of several meters, valves and other components, each of which is under constant stress and pressure. ...more

Gray Reed

What are “Drilling Operations”?

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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

Gray Reed

Louisiana Servitude Extended by Good Faith Drilling

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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

Gray Reed

Oil Field Services Gets Lump of Coal From Santa

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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

Gray Reed

Wave Goodbye To Unenforcable Mineral Lien Waivers: The Houston Court Of Appeals Weighs In With Mesa V. Deep Energy

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The Fourteenth Court of Appeals in Houston recently issued an opinion that will have profound impacts on mineral liens and contractual provisions purporting to waive mineral liens. The question of whether or not a pre-work...more

Gray Reed

Gas Well Operator’s Injunction Against Texas Town is Dissolved

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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

Gray Reed

Industry Custom Does Not Supersede Contract Language

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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

Gray Reed

Colorado Oil and Gas Survives Another Challenge

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The Colorado oil and gas industry breathed a collective sigh of relief when the state Supreme Court announced its unanimous decision in Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission v. Martinez. ...more

Gray Reed

Man Bites Dog – Local Zoning Board Okays Drilling-Friendly Ordinance

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In Frederick v. Allegheny Township Zoning Hearing Board, et al, the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court affirmed a local zoning ordinance allowing oil and gas operations in all zoning districts in the Township as long as they...more

Kelley Drye & Warren LLP

Energy Hearings This Week

Tuesday, Jun. 26, 2018 - Senate Energy and Natural Resources Hearings to examine the nominations of Teri L. Donaldson, of Texas, to be Inspector General, Christopher Fall, of Virginia, to be Director of the Office of...more

Gray Reed

An Indemnity Agreement Means What it Says

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We are reminded in Claybar v. Samson Exploration that a court will (if it’s doing its job) enforce an agreement according to what it actually says, not by that which one party or the other would have liked it to say or...more

BakerHostetler

Updated Survey of Texas Law on Horizontal Drilling and Subsurface Trespass

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Recent Texas opinions have clarified the rights and obligations of those constructing long lateral wells through horizontal drilling. BakerHostetler has updated its earlier survey of Texas law on horizontal drilling. ...more

Gray Reed

2017’s Bad Guys in Energy

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Once again we look back at the continuing cavalcade of crooks, criminals, miscreants and, to put it kindly, morons the less intellectually gifted, who met justice face-to-face in 2017. This year’s class includes a preacher,...more

Gray Reed

Blame Game Fails Louisiana Casing Vendor

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There’s no better place in the oil patch to play the blame game than 10,000 feet of leaky wellbore. What went wrong? In Justiss v. Oil Country Tubular Corporation, Justiss, a drilling contractor, entered into an IADC...more

Blank Rome LLP

Drill on Through to the Other Side: No Trespass When Drilling Through Mineral Estate with Surface Use Agreement

Blank Rome LLP on

Action Item: The Texas Supreme Court annunciated two critical points in Lightning Oil Co. v. Anadarko E&P Onshore: (1) unauthorized interference may be a trespass only when it impacts the mineral lessee’s ability to exercise...more

Gray Reed

Texas Subsurface Trespass Law Clarified

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We know that in Texas the mineral owner has the right to explore for and produce the minerals. What does that leave for the surface owner? In Lightning Oil Company v. Anadarko E&P Onshore, LLC the Texas Supreme Court tells us...more

Gray Reed

The Rule Against Perpetuities is Alive and Enforceable in Oklahoma

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Today we venture into Oklahoma, to be instructed on the Supreme Court’s treatment of the Rule Against Perpetuities. First, the Rule: No property interest is good unless it must vest, if all, not later than 21 years after...more

K&L Gates LLP

UK Shale Gas - Going all out for Shale

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As part of a package of measures to kick-start the shale gas industry in the UK, the UK government issued a joint Written Statement by DECC and DCLG on 16 September 2015 containing a new shale gas and oil policy. This policy...more

Dechert LLP

Drilling at depth – proposed changes to subterranean rights

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The government’s consultation on underground drilling access for the extraction of gas, oil and geothermal energy came to an end on 15 August 2014. The consultation sought views on the government’s proposal to introduce new...more

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