Oil and Gas Lawyer Blog

The Texas Supreme Court has once again reversed a jury verdict in favor of a royalty owner, holding that their claim is barred by limitations. The Court today issued its opinion in Shell Oil Company v Ross, reversing the judgments of the courts below in favor of Ross for $72,000 in unpaid royalties.

I wrote about this case back in January, see my previous post here.

Ross' lease required that royalties on gas be based on the "amount realized" by the lessee. But from 1988 to 1994 Shell paid royalties based on a weighted-average price instead of the price it received for the gas. Then from 1994 to 1997, Shell paid royalties based on an internally generated "transfer price," which Shell admitted it could not explain. In both cases, Shell admitted that it had not paid royalties as required by the lease. Its sole defense was that the royalty owner had failed to bring his claim within the four-year statute of limiations.

The jury found that Shell fraudulently concealed its failure to pay royalty, and that Ross, exercising reasonable diligence, could not have discovered the royalty underpayment until 2002. The court of appeals affirmed, holding that there was sufficient evidence in the record to support the jury's findings.

The Supreme Court, in an opinion by Justice Lehrman, held that, "as a matter of law," the evidence showed that Ross should have discovered the royalty underpayments when they were made from information that was "readily accessible and publicly available."

Ross argued that he reasonably relied on the gas price Shell put in his royalty statements, because a Texas statute requires Shell to report on the check stub the price it received for the sale of the gas. The Court disagreed. It held that a royalty owner in effect must assume that the gas price on the royalty check stub is not accurate. "Reasonable diligence requires that owners of property interests make themselves aware of relevant information available in the public record."

What public information should Ross have looked at? First, said the Court, Ross should have asked Shell what price it was receiving for the gas. Or, Ross could have asked the companies to whom Shell sold the gas what price they paid. Or, Ross could have compared the price to a publicly available index price, which "would have informed the Rosses that Shell was underpaying royalty." Ross could have researched records at the Texas General Land Office to see what price the State was receiving for its royalty interest in the same wells.

The Court's opinion confirms the statements made by Justice Sharp of the Houston First District Court of Appeals in Samson Lone Star v. Hooks, decided earlier this year:

I reluctantly concur, based on the Texas Supreme Court's holding in BP America Production Co. v. Marshall, 342 S.W.3d 59 (Tex. 2011). In that case, the Texas Supreme Court makes clear that no lies on the part of a lessee, however self-serving and egregious, are sufficient to toll limitations, as long as it is technically possible for the lessor to have discovered the lie by resort to the Railroad Commission records. This burden the Court imposes upon lessors is severe. It is now a lessor's duty to presume that any statement made by its lessee is false and to ransack the esoteric and oft-changing records at the Railroad Commission to discover the truth or falsity of its lessee's statements. If, as is often the case, these records are technical in nature and require expert review to ferret out the truth, it is the lessor's job to hire experts out of its own pocket to perform such a review. If a lessor fails to take these steps, then it will have failed in exercising reasonable diligence to protect its mineral interests and, if the lessee's fraud is successful for longer than the limitations period, the lessor's claims will be barred by limitations.

The lesson: mineral owners should reserve the right to audit their royalty payments, and they should exercise that right at least every 3 to 4 years, to be sure that their royalties are being paid in accordance with their lease.

Another interesting case is pending before the Texas Supreme Court, this one involving condemnation of a pipeline easement. The San Antonio Court of Appeals, in LaSalle Pipeline v. Donnell Lands, affirmed a jury verdict awarding $650,000 to the landowner. The Supreme Court has asked for briefs on the merits but has not yet agreed to hear the case.

The Donnell family own an 8,000-acre ranch in McMullen County. LaSalle Pipeline sued to condemn an easement for a sixteen-inch gas pipeline across the ranch, for a length of 4.4 miles. In Texas, a condemnation case originally goes to three "commissioners" - citizens in the county appointed by the court to determine the amount to be awarded the landowner for the pipeline easement. The commissioners awarded the Donnells $226,000 for the easement - about $160 per rod, or $9.73 per foot. (A rod is 16.5 feet.) The Donnells appealed to the district court in McMullen County, where there was a trial de novo, meaning that the commissioners' award was not considered and the jury was asked to determine the amount of the award based on evidence at the trial.

There are three elements of damages in a pipeline condemnation case: the damage to the land within the permanent easement; the temporary damage caused to the land by the additional workspace needed to lay the pipeline; and the diminution in value of the remaining property caused by the existence of the pipeline. These damages are estimated by qualified real estate appraisers, who testify as experts at the trial.

The Donnells' real estate expert testified that the land within the easements was damaged by $34,500; the temporary workspace easement caused damage of $19,200; and the damage to the Donnells' remaining land caused by the easement was $820,000. He said that the portion of Donnell's property which was affected by the pipeline was 4,100 acres, and that the value of that 4,100 acres was decreased about 10% by having a sixteen-inch pipeline across it. LaSalle's expert testified that the pipeline had no effect on the value of the Donnells' property.

The jury awarded the Donnells $658,533 (about $468 per rod). The San Antonio Court of Appeals reduced the trial court's award for the temporary construction easement by $12,800, but otherwise affirmed the trial court's judgment.

In its appeal to the San Antonio court, LaSalle argued that the Donnells' appraiser's testimony could not support the jury's award for damage to the remainder of the Donnells' land. LaSalle argued that the evidence was "legally and factually insufficient" to support the verdict. In Texas, our intermediate appellate courts can overturn a jury verdict if it finds that the evidence is "factually insufficient" to support the jury's verdict. The court may overturn a jury's verdict "if the evidence is so weak or if the finding is so against the great weight and preponderance of the evidence that it is clearly wrong and unjust." The San Antonio court found that the Donnells' evidence was factually sufficient to support the verdict.

Our Texas Supreme Court has authority to overturn a jury verdict only if the evidence is "legally insufficient" to support it. In other words, the Court may not "weigh" the evidence and may not overturn a verdict on factual insufficiency grounds. The Court may reverse a verdict only if there is a complete absence of evidence of a vital fact or the evidence offered to prove a vital fact is "no more than a mere scintilla," or if the evidence establishes conclusively the opposite of the vital fact. All of this may sound a little bit arcane, but in the world of lawyers this distinction is important. In LaSalle's appeal to the Supreme Court, it has a harder burden to prove that the jury's award should be overturned. LaSalle must show that there was "no" competent evidence to support the verdict.

This is an important case to pipeline companies, who are busily condemning pipelines in the Eagle Ford Shale play. As LaSalle's brief says, "under the Fourth Court of Appeals' reasoning, there can be no certainty or predictability in the budgeting for land costs associated with such projects, because under the Court of Appeals' opinion landowners may impermissibly reap substantial remainder damages based solely upon speculation and conjecture. The appellate decision in this case is being cited by landowners in condemnation actions pending throughout South Texas and the Eagle Ford Shale area for the proposition that substantial remainder damages are due in every pipeline condemnation case."

If the Supreme Court elects to take this case, it will be interesting to see if it decides once again to overturn a jury verdict in favor of a landowner.

Mineral owners have lost another substantial verdict against an oil company based on their failure to bring the claim within four years. In Samson Lone Star v. Hooks, No. 01-09-00328-CV, the Houston First District Court of Appeals reversed a verdict and judgment against Samson for $21 million, holding that the claim was barred by the four-year statute of limitations as a matter of law -- even though the jury had found that the Hooks should not have discovered Samson's fraudulent conduct until April 2007, less than four years prior to their suit.

The case is reminiscent of a similar case, Exxon v. Emerald, decided by the Texas Supreme Court in 2009, in which the Supreme Court reversed an $18 million verdict against Exxon, again on the basis that the mineral owners' claims were barred by limitations -- despite an express finding by the jury that the plaintiffs had filed their claim within four years after they discovered or should have discovered Exxon's fraudulent conduct. (Pat Lochridge, the lawyer who represented Exxon in the trial court in Exxon v. Emerald, represented the plaintiffs in Samson v. Hooks. You win some, you lose some.)

The Supreme Court did it again in BP v. Marshall, decided earlier this year. Again the Court overruled a jury verdict in favor of royalty owners, holding that their claim was barred by limitations as a matter of law.

One justice wrote a separate opinion in Samson v. Hooks, reluctantly concurring with the majority on the limitations issue and agreeing that the court was bound by the Supreme Court precedent in BP v. Marshall, but urging the Supreme Court to revisit its prior rulings. In my view, it is an eloquent argument against the prior rulings of the Supreme Court. Here is the relevant portion of Justice Jim Sharp's concurring opinion:

It is undisputed that Samson drilled a directional well bottomed within the "buffer zone" established in the Hooks' Jefferson County Lease (the "Lease") and failed to elect between the three alternatives outlined in the Lease, thus exposing itself to liability for breach of contract. If the Lease had allowed pooling, Samson could have solved the problem by pooling the lands covered by the Lease with the adjacent lands. The Lease, however, did not allow pooling.

Samson's solution to this problem was to begin misrepresenting various "facts" to escape the consequences of its actions. Its landman, Lanoue, filed papers with the Railroad Commission falsely certifying that Samson had pooling authority from the Hooks. He later filed paperwork in the county's real property records falsely indicating that the Hooks had already agreed to pool. Lanoue then sent a letter to the Hooks asking them to agree to pool the westernmost 50 acres of the Hooks' acreage in the Lease into the BSM 1 Unit. When Charles Hooks called Lanoue and asked for more information about the well's location, Lanoue represented to Hooks that the well was located approximately 1500 feet from the lease line, a location outside the buffer zone. When Charles Hooks asked for a plat, Lanoue faxed him one that represented a bottom-hole location that was +/- 1400 feet from the lease line, the accuracy of which he, Lanoue, had certified with no reference to an actual bottom-hole location, although it was ascertainable from a prior directional survey. Instead, when asked the origin of those measurements, he answered: "I got them from myself." On this basis the Hooks agreed to the formation of the unit.

Thus it is clear that Samson, through its representative, took action to cover up its own error by both oral and written misrepresentations to its lessor, born of "assuming" and "hoping." It is further clear that the Hooks, after asking for and receiving verification of Lanoue's oral representation in the form of a plat, believed its lessee's representations and made no attempt to go beyond them to discover the truth or falsity thereof. On these facts, the majority has found that the discovery rule does not apply to the Hooks' fraud, fraudulent inducement, and statutory fraud claims and that they are barred by limitations as a matter of law.

I reluctantly concur, based on the Texas Supreme Court's holding in BP America Production Co. v. Marshall, 342 S.W.3d 59 (Tex. 2011). In that case, the Texas Supreme Court makes clear that no lies on the part of a lessee, however self-serving and egregious, are sufficient to toll limitations, as long as it is technically possible for the lessor to have discovered the lie by resort to the Railroad Commission records. This burden the Court imposes upon lessors is severe. It is now a lessor's duty to presume that any statement made by its lessee is false and to ransack the esoteric and oft-changing records at the Railroad Commission to discover the truth or falsity of its lessee's statements. If, as is often the case, these records are technical in nature and require expert review to ferret out the truth, it is the lessor's job to hire experts out of its own pocket to perform such a review. If a lessor fails to take these steps, then it will have failed in exercising reasonable diligence to protect its mineral interests and, if the lessee's fraud is successful for longer than the limitations period, the lessor's claims will be barred by limitations.

Such is the case here. Had the Hooks presumed that Samson's oral representations, followed by written representations, about the bottom-hole location of the well were false, and had they hired an expert to resort to Railroad Commission records to trace the various filings (some of which were also false), that expert could have hit upon the directional survey and, by virtue of his expertise, interpreted it to prove the falsity of the representations. Instead they merely relied on the oral and written representations of their lessee, without undergoing what doubtless seemed to them the useless expense of hiring an expert to rake through the Railroad Commission records with an eye towards exposing a potential falsehood.

I believe the Texas Supreme Court has placed an unnecessary and very heavy burden on lessors by its ruling in BP America, one that will result either in much money being spent unnecessarily on prophylactic forensic review of Railroad Commission records or in many viable claims being lost to limitations. As we are, however, bound to follow the Court's rulings, I reluctantly concur in that part of the opinion that finds the Hooks' fraud, fraudulent inducement, and statutory fraud claims barred by limitations as a matter of law.

The case will surely be appealed, so we shall see if the Supreme Court revisits the issue.

The Eighth Court of Appeals in El Paso has issued its opinion in State of Texas v. Cemex Construction Materials South, LLC. The court reversed a summary judgment for Cemex and granted the State's summary judgment, returning the case to the trial court to assess damages. The State is seeking damages of $558 million.

Cemex is the world's leading supplier of ready-mix concrete, and one of the world's largest producers of White Portland Cement. Cemex is based in Monterrey, Mexico, and has operations across North and South America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. It has annual sales of more than $14 billion.

Cemex operates a quarry for sand, gravel and caliche in El Paso County. According to the State's petition, Cemex and its predecessors have mined about 100 million tons of materials from the quarry since 1940. Cemex bought the quarry from the British group RMC in 2005.

The State claims to own the rights to the materials mined from the quarry because the sand, gravel and caliche are "minerals" reserved by the State when the lands were originally granted in 1900, 1906 and 1912. The El Paso court held that the lands were classified as "mineral" at the time of the original grants and are therefore "mineral-classified lands," and that the sand, gravel and caliche consitute "minerals" and are therefore owned by the State as a matter of law. (See my previous article on mineral-classified lands here.)

The Court of Appeals relied on the opinion of the Texas Supreme Court in Schwarz v. State, 703 S.W.2d 187 (Tex. 1986), which held that the State owns all coal and lignite under mineral-classified lands in Texas. Schwarz is notable because it applies a different rule in determining what substances are "minerals" for purposes of minerals reserved to the State than the rule it has adopted for construction of instruments reserving "minerals" between private parties. Some substances are not considered "minerals" in a private transaction if the removal of those substances would destroy the surface estate. But the Court in Schwarz rejected this rule for classification of "minerals" reserved to the State. So, according to the El Paso court's opinion, the State owns all sand, gravel and caliche in mineral-classified lands even if mining of those substances would destroy the surface estate.

The El Paso court's opinion in Cemex does not discuss what test should be applied under Schwarz to determine whether a substance is a "mineral" and therefore owned by the State. For conveyances and reservations between private parties after June 8, 1983, whether a substance is a "mineral" is determined by the "ordinary-and-natural-meaning" test. Under this test, "other minerals" includes "all substances within the ordinary and natural meaning of that word" regardless of how they are extracted. Moser v. U.S. Steel Corp., 676 S.W.2d 99 (Tex. 1984). Limestone, building stone, sand, gravel and caliche have been held not  to be "other minerals" under this test. The court in Schwarz appears to be applying the ordinary-and-natural-meaning test in classifying lignite as a "mineral": "It is clear that the sovereign in Texas has always claimed all of the substances commonly classified as 'minerals' and only gives away those substances by an express release or conveyance." 703 S.W.2d at 191 (emphasis added). Clearly, the El Paso court did not apply this test to the State's mineral reservation:

[B]ecause the State did not unequivocally grant to the original purchasers in clear and explicit terms the dirt, caliche, sand, gravel, limestone and other minerals and materials to which Cemex now claims ownership, those items were withheld from the State's conveyances of the ... lands and any ambiguity or obscurity in the terms of the statute, such as the terms "the minerals," "stones valuable for ornamental or building purposes," and "other valuable building material," must be interpreted in favor of the State.

The El Paso court appears to be holding that any substance of economic value that can be removed from the land is a "mineral" for purposes of the State's title.

Cemex will undoubtedly be asking the Texas Supreme Court to review the case.

Earlier this year, the San Antonio Court of Appeals issued an opinion in a case contesting the will of Belton Kleberg (B.K.) Johnson, greatgrandson of the founder of the King Ranch. Johnson died in 2001 at the age of 71. In the 1950's, Johnson was passed over to head the management of the 825,000-acre King Ranch lands, and he sold his interest in the Ranch in 1976, but kept his royalty interests.

Johnson's life and the will contest opinion give a rare glimpse into the world of the rich and powerful in South Texas. Johnson was educated at Deerfield Academy, Cornell and Stanford. He served on the board of directors of AT&T, Tenneco, Campbell Soup, the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research, and several Texas banks. He was the owner of Chaparrosa south of San Antonio, where he lived and raised his family and raised registered Santa Gertrudis cattle. He owned the Hyatt Regency Hotel on the San Antonio Riverwalk, and he restored the Fairmount Hotel in San Antonio.

Johnson was married three times. He and his first wife, Patsy, had three children: Ceci, Sarah and Kley. Kley died in a car accident in 1991, survived by his wife and two children. Sarah married Steven Pitt and they have three children. Ceci married Mark McMurrey, and they have three children.

Johnson divorced Patsy in 1987, and in 1991 he married Lynne, who died of cancer in 1994. In 1996, he married Laura, to whom he was married when he died in 2001.

At the time of his death, Johnson's latest will, written in 1999, left his estate to a trust. His wife Laura was the beneficiary of the trust for the remainder of her life. The trust gave Laura the right to name Johnson's children and grandchildren as beneficiaries of up to 1/2 of the trust property (a "power of appointment"), and the other half (or the entire trust estate if Laura did not exercise her power of appointment) would go to a foundation created by Johnson, the Belton Kleberg Johnson Foundation. So the 1999 will essentially left 1/2 of his estate to his foundation, and gave Laura control over whether his children and grandchildren would get any of the other half.

Johnson's daughters and grandchildren were not pleased with the estate plan created by Johnson's 1999 will, so they brought suit contesting the will, alleging that Laura had exercised "undue influence" over Johnson to get him to sign this will. The jury found that Laura had exercised undue influence. The Court of Appeals affirmed. The court also affirmed the trial court's award of $6.1 million in attorneys' fees to the lawyers for Johnson's children and grandchildren.

Additional appeals and fights will undoubtedly follow.

The Texas Supreme Court issued three opinions last week of interest to Texas land and mineral owners: one dealing with the duties of holders of executive rights, one limiting the condemnation powers of pipelines, and one addressing whether injection well operators can be held liable for trespass if the injected substances migrate onto adjacent lands.

Leslie v. Veteran's Land Board - The duty of the executive rights holder

The Supreme Court again considered what duty the holder of the right to lease ("executive right") minerals owned by another has to the non-executive mineral interest owner. The court significantly weakened its prior decision in In re: Bass, and increased the duties of the holder of the executive right. The right to lease is often separated from the mineral interest. For example, if I sell a tract to a developer, but want to keep part of the mineral interest, the developer may object, worried that I, as a mineral interest owner, might lease my interest and allow a company to drill wells on the property he intends to develop for a residential subdivision. A common solution to this problem is for me to retain a part of the mineral interest (or a part of the royalty interest) but convey to the developer the exclusive right to lease the minerals. The developer is then protected, because no mineral development can take place without his consent. Whenever the right to lease is separated from the mineral or royalty interest, the holder of the leasing right is called the holder of the "executive right," and the other mineral or royalty owner without any leasing right is called the owner of the "non-executive" interest.

In the Leslie case, a developer named Bluegreen purchased 4,100 acres of land in southwest Tarrant County, outside of Fort Worth, to develop a large residential subdivision, Mountain Lakes, of over 1700 lots. Bluegreen acquired some of the minerals in the 4,100 acres and all of the executive rights to the minerals. Bluegreen then imposed restrictive covenants on its development to govern what kinds of homes could be built, what uses of the property could be made, etc. One of those restrictive covenants prohibited "commercial oil drilling, oil development operations, oil refining, quarrying or mining operation." Later, development of the Barnett Shale formation in Tarrant County occurred, and companies sought to lease the 4,100 acres to drill Barnett wells, but found that the restrictive covenant prohibited development. Evidence in the case showed that "Mountain Lakes is sitting on $610 million worth of minerals that, in large part, cannot be reached from outside the subdivision." So the non-executive mineral owners sued, seeking to have the restrictive covenants declared void. Their theory was that, by imposing the restrictive covenant prohibiting mineral development, Bluegreen had breached its duty as the holder of the executive rights. The trial court declared the restrictive covenant void, but the Eastland Court of Appeals upheld it. The Supreme Court agreed with the trial court, holding that "Bluegreen breached its duty to [the non-executive mineral owners] by filing the restrictive covenants. The remedy, we think, should be the ... cancellation of the restrictive covenants."

Continue reading "Three Important Texas Supreme Court Opinions Issued" »

Counsel for the plaintiffs in BP v. Marshall filed unusual motions for rehearing after the Texas Supreme Court reversed the judgments of the courts below awarding substantial damages for fraud. See my discussion of the Supreme Court's decision here. The Marshalls' attorneys' motion for rehearing accuses the court of engaging in "de novo review of a jury finding," exceeding the court's constitutional authority, violating the Marshalls' constitutional right to a jury trial, ignoring uncontradicted expert testimony, and ignoring its own prior precedent. The motion calls the court's reasoning "disingenuous." The Vaquillas attorneys' motion for rehearing says that "the decisional process has gone awry," and the court "has not decided, or even recognized, the main issue in the Vaquillas-Wagner case." From the Vaquillas motion for rehearing:

"The Opinion resolves the BP-Marshall dispute on a legal insufficiency point, but the Opinion never uses the phrase 'standard of review,' never alludes to the standard of review, and never undertakes to apply one."

"Perhaps the Court has in mind an explanation -- maybe even a devastating explanation -- for making the evidence that supports the verdict all vanish. Very well, then, but the Opinion ought to opine on these things, rather than leaving the world wondering."

"Again, any fair observer will acknowledge the Court's heavy workload, with many administravie duties and 900 cases a year clamoring for review. The torrent of cases means that not every Justice can read every record. A system of triage is inevitable. Still, when an Opinion can miss the main issue in one half of the case, forget the standard of review in the other, and speak of an 'adverse possession cause of action' -- while still going out the door unanimously -- something would seem to be wrong."

"The Opinion analyzes the accrual issue in terms of 'Wagner's adverse possession cause of action.' But Wagner has no 'adverse possession cause of action.' Nobody does. Adverse possesssion is not a cause of action, and this Court has never before uttered the phrase 'adverse possession cause of action.'"

"These issues need attention. For one thing, the Court has built a reputation as a leading American tribunal, perhaps the leading American tribunal, for oil and gas cases. Mistakes that might matter little if made by the Supreme Court of Vermont may have more far-reaching effects if made by the Supreme Court of Texas. Further, the Court faults the Marshalls for not acting as a 'sophisticated lessor' should. Under those circumstances, it is in the Court's interest to ensure that its Opinion displays the kind of precision that has historically characterized the Court's oil and gas cases."

"The Court should vacate its decision and start over."

Not your usual motions for rehearing.

Continue reading "Texas Supreme Court Again Reverses Jury Verdict Favoring Royalty Owners" »

The Texas Supreme Court has reversed a decision of the Austin Court of Appeals holding that the Texas Railroad Commission must consider traffic issues in deciding whether to issue a permit for an injection well to Pioneer Exploration, Ltd. in Wise County. In its decision, the Court held that, in considering whether issuance of the permit was "in the public interest," the RRC need not consider the adverse impact on roads and traffic caused by truck traffic to and from the injection well.

Continue reading "Texas Supreme Court Rules Against Citizens Complaining of Injection Well" »

The EPA has issued its draft plan to study the impacts of hydraulic fracturing on drinking water in the U.S. Two state regulatory authorities have absolved frac'ed wells from responsibility for contaminating drinking water in Colorado and Texas. Maryland's top einvornmental regulator urged lawmakers to impose a two-year moratorium on frac'ing, as Maryland's legislature considers additional laws to regulate the practice. Meanwhile, the boom in shale gas drilling continues.

Continue reading "More About Hydraulic Fracturing in the News" »

Recently some of my clients have received notices of class action settlements in Coll v. Abaco Operating, LLC, et al., in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division, C.A. No. 2:08-CV-345 TJW. The case reveals a little-known aspect of royalty payments: many companies never reimburse their royalty owners for refunds of severance taxes.

Most royalty owners know little about severance taxes except that they are a deduction that regularly appears on their royalty check stubs. Texas imposes a tax on the value of all oil and gas produced in the state: 7.5% for gas and 4.6% for oil. Most producing states impose similar severance taxes. Pennsylvania has been debating whether to pass a severance tax in light of its budget problems and recent development of the Marcellus Shale in that state. Texas' severance taxes are paid into its "rainy day fund" that has been much in the news of late.

Continue reading "Class Action to Force Companies to Reimburse Royalty Owners for Severance Tax Refunds - Coll v. Abaco" »

Here is the closing statement of Range Resources filed with the Texas Railroad Commission after its hearing on complaints that Range's Barnett Shale wells in Parker County have contaminated groundwater.  It provides a good summary of the events to date and the evidence produced at the hearing.  Range Production Company Closing Statement.pdf

Here is a link to a summary of the Range dispute prepared by Gene Powell, Editor of the Powell Barnett Shale Newsletter.

I always counsel my clients to provide in their oil and gas leases that they have the right to inspect and copy all documents of the lessee necessary to determine whether royalties have been paid correctly, and to audit the records of the lessee to confirm accurate payment of royalties. Royalty owners generally assume that the royalty payments they received have been calculated and paid as required by their leases. This is not always the case, as illustrated by a recent case, Shell Oil Company SWEPI LP v. Ross, 2010 WL 670549 (Tex.App.-Houston [1st Dist.], decided February 25, 2010. The case illustrates typical schemes used by producers to underpay royalty owners, and their efforts to prevent royalty owners from knowing how royalties are calculated and, when the royalty owners discover the underpayment, to prevent royalty owners from recovering the underpayment. 

In Shell v. Ross, the trial court and Houston Court of Appeals held that Shell had underpaid royalties due to Ross.  Shell has appealed to the Texas Supreme Court.  The Texas Supreme Court refused to consider the case, but Shell has filed a motion for re hearing that is still pending. Other producers are very interested in the case:  friend-of-the-court briefs have been filed by Chesapeake, Texas Oil & Gas Association, and the American Petroleum Institute asking the Court to reverse the Court of Appeals.

The facts of the case require some explanation but illustrate well the importance of verifying the correct calculation of royalties.

Continue reading "The Importance of Audit Rights in Oil and Gas Leases: Shell v. Ross" »

EPA's order against Range Resources for allegedly charging groundwater with gas from its Barnett Shale wells has caused quite a stir.

The Texas Railroad Commission has issued two news releases, one on December 7 and one on December 8.  Commission Chairman Victor Carrillo said that he has told EPA Regions 6 Administrator Al Armendariz that "EPA's actions are premature as the Railroad Commission continues to actively investigate this issue and has not yet determined the cause of the gas. This EPA action is unprecedented in Texas, and commissioners will consider all options as we move forward." Commissioner Michael Williams said "this is Washington politics of the worst kind.  The EPA's act is nothing more than grandstanding in an effort to interject the federal government into Texas business." The December 8 press release said that the Commission has called a hearing for January 10 and "expects both parties, the EPA as well as Range Resources representatives, to appear before Hearings Examiners and testify as to the allegations made yesterday." Range has said it will attend the hearing, but it understands that the EPA will not.

Continue reading "Update on EPA Order Against Range Resources, Parker County" »