Almost a year ago, a district court in Travis County ruled that the Texas Railroad Commission had violated Texas’ Administrative Procedure Act by issuing a well permit to Magnolia Oil & Gas after informally adopting rules for issuance of permits for allocation wells and “PSA” wells (production-sharing-agreement wells) without complying…
The Cockrell School of Engineering at the University of Texas in Austin this week issued a report, three years in the making, “Don’t Mess with Texas: Getting the Lone Star State to Net-Zero by 2050.” The study was co-authored by Vibrant Clean Energy and the University of Colorado Boulder. Funding…
I first wrote about earthquakes caused by injection wells in 2015. After earthquake events large enough to be felt in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, the Legislature funded a $4.4 million study by UT’s Bureau of Economic Geology to monitor quake activity in areas where disposal wells were active. Because of…
On this day in 1861 Georgia Senator Alexander Stephens gave a speech, known as the Cornerstone Speech, in Savannah Georgia, just after he became the provisional vice president of the Confederacy. Less than a month later the Confederates fired on a federal fort in Charleston Harbor, starting the Civil War.…
Talos Energy announced that it has signed a lease with the Texas General Land Office for more than 40,000 acres offshore to store CO2 captured from industrial sites along the coast. Talos said it is capable of storing up to 275 million metric tons of Co2 and is “the first…
Foote v. Texcel Exploration, decided by the 11th Court of Appeals in Eastland, provides a lesson to surface owners. Foote grazed cattle on land in Knox County under a lease with Styles. He put 650 head of cattle on the property, grazing winter wheat. Texcel operated oil and gas wells…
Wikipedia defines “lawfare” as “using legal systems and institutions to achieve a goal.” Some use the term to refer to the misuse of legal systems against an enemy, “such as by damaging or delegitimizing them, wasting their time and money, or winning a public relations victory.” The Fort Worth Court…
Another blogger in the oil field: Mike Shelman, OilyStuff.com. Check him out.
We’ve seen much posturing and finger-pointing from politicians on who is to blame for power failures during Winter Storm Uri last February. UT’s Austin Energy Institute has issued a report: The timeline and Events of the February 2021 Texas Electric Grid Blackouts, laying out the facts on what happened. The…
Last week the Texas Supreme Court handed down its opinion in Nettye Engler Energy, LP v. Bluestone Natural Resources II, LLC, No. 20-0639, affirming the lower court’s ruling that Engler’s royalty interest bears its share of gas gathering and processing costs. Engler owns a royalty interest in a section of…