Significant cases on oil and gas issues in 2019: In Texas Outfitters v. Nicholson, the Texas Supreme Court again addressed the duty of the older of executive rights to minerals owned by another. In Trial v. Dragon, the Supreme Court delved into the arcane theories of the Duhig rule…
Happy New Year. The decade now ending was the decade of the Permian Basin. Its rise in production changed the US to a net oil exporter. Permian gas production, a byproduct of the search for oil, drove down gas prices and resulted in a frenzied effort to build pipelines to…
The Texas Tribune has published an article describing a remarkable settlement in San Antonio Bay Estuarine Waterkeeper and S. Diane Wilson v. Formosa Plastics Corp, a suit claiming environmental damages for Formosa’s plastics pollution discharges into Lavaca Bay. The judge in the US District Court for the Southern District of…
Two recent court of appeals cases address the enforceability of liquidated damages clauses: TEC Olmos, LLC v. ConocoPhillips Company, and Fairfield Industries v. EP Energy E&P Company. The Texas Supreme Court requested the parties in TEC Olmos to file briefs on the merits but recently denied review. In EP Energy,…
Last March the El Paso Court of Appeals decided Cimarex Energy v. Anadarko Petroleum, No. 08-16-00353-CV. The facts are these: Cimarex leased a 1/6th interest in 440 acres in Ward County. Anadarko leased the remaining 5/6ths. Cimarex asked Anadarko to let Cimarex participate in wells on the leases under a…
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…
Last March the San Antonio Court of Appeals handed down its decision in Bell v. Chesapeake Energy, No. 04-18-00129-CV. Chesapeake has asked the Texas Supreme Court to review the case. The facts bear a resemblance to Murphy v. Adams, decided by the Supreme Court last year. Both involve construction of…
In a short opinion, the Supreme Court of North Dakota decided a case brought by Newfield Exploration against the North Dakota Board of University and School Lands to determine how royalties on gas should be calculated under the State’s leases to Newfield. The case illustrates how post-production costs can sometimes…
ConocoPhillips always seems to be getting into interesting scrapes. In 1995, ConocoPhillips bought oil and gas leases from EOG covering 1,058 acres, the Las Piedras Ranch, in Zapata County. At the time there was one producing well on the leases. The minerals belonged to the Ramirez family. One member of…
Three recent cases illustrate a little known aspect of Texas law – administrative law and how it works, and doesn’t work. Although the cases don’t directly affect mineral owners, they show how different the Texas Railroad Commission’s administrative process is from other agencies’. Many disputes in Texas are resolved not…