A Focus on Energy: M&A Trends in the Energy Sector
Assignments of interests in oil and gas leases often incorporate by reference outside agreements. This can be a helpful shortcut to avoid including every lengthy and confidential provision that was drafted during negotiations...more
Let’s assume you own 165 acres in Tioga County. In 2019, you sign a new oil and gas lease with ABC Drilling. You negotiate an 18% net royalty. The royalty clause, however, requires ABC Drilling to calculate the royalty on...more
The plain, ordinary, and generally accepted meaning of a word doesn’t mean “anything goes”. It depends on context, says the Supreme Court of Texas in Finley Resources Inc. v. Headington Royalty Inc., a dispute over the...more
And what a difference it was! In Apache Corp. v. Apollo Expl. LLC et al, Apache and others acquired an oil and gas lease on 100,000+ acres in the Texas Panhandle. The primary term was three years. The effective date was...more
An oil and gas lease with a “free gas” clause may be a valuable tool for landowners to push back against drillers’ inaccurate attempts to value gas at the “wellhead”. Prior to the advent of Marcellus Shale drilling, "free...more
On January 24, 2023, the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania held that Act 85 of 2019, which permits drilling horizontal oil and gas wells across existing drilling units, is not unconstitutional....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
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
“To spud or not to spud,” that was the question before the Texas Supreme Court in determining whether a lessee, Sundown Energy, maintained a lease on non-producing acreage under the lease’s continuous drilling provisions.1...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
In Endeavor Energy Resources, L.P. v. Energen Resources Corp. et al. the Supreme Court of Texas construed a continuous development clause in an oil and gas lease covering 11,300 acres in Howard County. After the primary term,...more
From Great Western. Drilling, Ltd. v. Pathfinder Oil & Gas, Inc. we learn that if you want one agreement to be conditioned on execution of another one, you’d better say so … in writing … in the first one....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
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
Quick answer: It depends on what the lease says. Last week featured a tug-of-war between a producer and the community in which it operates; this week in HJSA No. 3 LP v. Sundown Energy LP it’s the producer and the lessor....more
As promised, here is a more in-depth analysis of the recent Supreme Court of Texas opinion in TRO-X LP v. Anadarko Petroleum Corp. ...more
Here is what we believe is an unusual situation: A gas unit is formed. The gas well ceases to produce. Another gas well produces from an oil unit, but the lease at issue is not included in the oil unit. Is the lease...more