My partner Nicholas Miller recently appeared on Tiffany Dowell’s podcast “Ag Law in the Field,” one of the programs offered by Texas A&M Agrilife Extension Service. A great discussion on how to approach negotiating an oil and gas lease. You can listen to it here. Check out Tiffany’s other podcasts…
I recently ran across an excellent article explaining the relationship between retained acreage clauses in oil and gas leases and density and proration rules promulgated by the Texas Railroad Commission: “Fun New Ways for Density and Proration Rules to Bust Your Lease: Retained Acreage Clauses and ‘Governmental Authority’ Language in…
Two recent appellate opinions illustrate why landowners and their counsel need to know the basic fundamentals of field rules and how they can affect provisions in oil and gas leases. I wrote about those cases in 2015. Both involve the interaction between field rules and lease provisions. ConocoPhillips Co. v.…
An excellent article by Judon Fambrough of the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University, about how oil and gas leases can be extended beyond there primary term, can be found here. Great tips about how to avoid pitfalls in lease terms. Mr. Fambrough has written many good articles about…
Last week I presented a paper at the Texas State Bar Advanced Real Estate CLE Conference for attorneys in San Antonio. I was asked to write a paper giving real estate attorneys a basic introduction to negotiating oil and gas leases. It might seem odd that real estate attorneys would want…
I have recently been asked to review requests for lease ratifications sent to my clients, and I thought that ratifications would be a good topic for this site. Companies generally ask owners of royalty and non-executive mineral interests to ratify oil and gas leases covering the lands in which they…
Ian Urbina, the New York Times reporter who has written several articles recently about oil and gas exploration and the perils of hydraulic fracturing, recently wrote an article, “Learning Too Late of Perils in Gas Well Leases,” that appeared on the front page of the Times on December 2. In…