Yesterday the Texas Supreme Court denied a petition in one case and granted a petition in the other, both dealing with provisions in oil and gas leases. The Court denied Chesapeake’s petition in Chesapeake v. Bell, construing an express drainage offset clause in Bell’s lease. The San Antonio Court of…
In 2017 I wrote about consent-to-assign provisions in oil and gas leases, and I commented on a case decided by the Tyler Court of Appeals that year addressing such provisions, Carrizo Oil & Gas v. Barrow-Shaver Resources, 2017 WL 412892. In December last year, the Texas Supreme Court wrote…
Litigation of retained acreage clauses seems to be on the rise. Apache Deepwater, LLC, v. Double Eagle Development, LLC, decided by the El Paso Court of Appeals last year, is now before the Supreme Court on petition for review, and the Court has asked the parties to file briefs on…
I got the idea to start this blog after I made a presentation to a landowner group in which I distributed a checklist for negotiating an oil and gas lease. Soon thereafter, I began receiving calls from people who had found the checklist on the internet. The organization that sponsored…
The Texas Supreme Court has reconsidered its decision not to hear two appeals involving retained acreage clauses: XOG Operating, LLC v. Chesapeake Exploration Limited Partnership, No. 15-0935, and Endeavor Energy Resources, L.P. v. Discovery Operating, Inc., No. 16-0155. The Court initially refused to consider the cases, after ordering briefs on…
Last December, the Eastland Court of Appeals issued its opinion in Crystal River Oil & Gas, LLC v. Patton, No. 11-15-00217-CV. Crystal River owned and operated wells on an oil and gas lease in Stonewall County. The oil wells on the lease produced twenty barrels of salt water for every…
Provisions in oil and gas leases requiring the lessor’s consent to assignment of the lessee’s interest are common. A lessor may have reasonable concerns about assignment of the lease, especially if the lessor is also the owner of the surface estate of the leased premises. The lessor may have agreed…
I recently wrote about two appellate opinions dealing with retained acreage clauses in oil and gas leases. A retained acreage clause requires the lessee to release acreage not assigned to a producing well at the end of the primary term, or at the end of a continuous drilling program conducted…
In its 2009 Legislative Session, the Texas Legislature passed House Bill 2259, whose stated purpose is to ensure that inactive oil and gas wells get plugged and that surface equipment associated with those wells gets removed. I provided a summary of the bill’s terms in a post on this site.…
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…