The recently completed session of the Texas Legislature several bills were filed addressing flaring from oil and gas wells — none of which passed. The number and variety of bills does, however, indicate the increased level of interest and concern about unwarranted flaring of natural gas. HB 1377: Revises the…
Landowners are often faced with a conundrum: can they accept a royalty check if they believe it is in the wrong amount? Ms. Strickhausen owns a half interest in the minerals under a tract of land in La Salle County. Her minerals are subject to a lease owned by BPX…
HB 3794 This bill, signed by the Governor, fixes a problem with the provisions of the Texas Business and Commerce Code that grant a security interest in oil and gas production and proceeds to secure the payor’s obligation to pay royalty owners. I have written about this problem before. Previous…
According to the Houston Chronicle, “ERCOT estimates the amount of solar capacity alone could more than double by May 2022, growing to more than 17,000 megawatts from about 7,000 megawatts in April. One megawatt is enough to power about 200 Texas homes on hot summer day.” That’s 3.4 million homes.…
From the Houston Chronicle: This makes absolutely no economic sense to me.
Today a district court in Travis County held that the Texas Railroad Commission violated the Administrative Procedure Act by informally adopting rules for issuance of allocation and production sharing well permits without following the rule-making procedures of the Act. The Court ruled in an appeal by a mineral owner of…
Two unusual cases have recently been decided by the El Paso Court of Appeals, both arising out of the same underlying facts. Both deal with a tax foreclosure on royalty interests. In the late 1990s an attorney and two mineral buyers got together and proposed to taxing districts to handle…
Link here to Texas Tribune article. Not a good idea. ERCOT definitely made some mistakes in the freeze, but it had no authority to require generators to winterize. Everyone is still pointing the finger at everyone else. Another Texas Tribune article: the legislature is now considering creating a $2 billion…
Here is link to an excellent publication by Tiffany Dowell Lashmet, Assistant Professor and Extension Specialist at Texas A&M AgriLife Extension. Print it out and save it.
Last week the Texas Supreme Court issued a per curiam opinion, without oral argument, reversing the judgment of the El Paso Court of Appeals in Sundown Energy LP v. HJSA No. 3 Limited Partnership, No. 19-10654. The lease at issue covers 30,450 acres in Ward County. The case is another…