Governmental entities in Texas like school districts, municipalities, hospital districts, and counties rely heavily on property taxes to finance their operations. Mineral interests are real property interests, and when a producing well is drilled the owners of rights to production from the well, both the working interest and the royalty…
This is from Visual Capitalist (click on image to enlarge):
Article from Texas Tribune, by Erin Douglas, republished with permission: Deep underneath the ground, fluids travel down and shoot through ancient shale formations, fracturing rock and starting the flow of oil — the essential part of hydraulic fracturing technology that’s transformed America’s oil industry. But that’s not all that comes…
Here’s a great visual from visualcapitalist.com (click on image to enlarge):
The El Paso Court of Appeals tangled with the accommodation doctrine in Lyle v. Midway Solar, LLC, No. 08-19-00216-CV, and the mineral owner lost. The Lyles own a 27.5% mineral interest in 315 acres in Pecos County. Gary Drgac owns the surface. Drgac leased the 315 acres to Midway Solar…
Texas courts are very reluctant to hold that oil and gas lease provisions are ambiguous. The same holds true for deeds and wills. These instruments affect title to land, and if an instrument is ambiguous it inserts uncertainty into land titles and results in litigation over the parties’ intent using…
Netty Engler Energy, LP has asked the Texas Supreme Court to review the decision of the Fort Worth Court of Appeals in Netty Engler Energy, LP v. Bluestone Natural Resources II, LLC, 2020 WL 3865269 (July 9, 2020). Engler owns a royalty interest in a section of land in Tarrant…
Thomas M. Reavley, senior judge on the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, died today at age 99. Judge Reavley was on the Texas Supreme Court when I clerked there in 1975-76. The obituary below is from the Texas Supreme Court. Tom Reavley, who served for nine years on the Texas…
Today is the birthday of Benoit Mandelbrot (b 11-20-1924, d 10-14-2010), a mathematician and discoverer of the Mandelbrot set and studied fractal geometry. He was Sterling Professor of Mathematical Science at Yale University, the oldest professor in Yale’s history to receive tenure. Below is an image of the Mandelbrot set.…
On October 28 Judge David Jones, US Bankruptcy Court for Southern District in Houston, issued a memorandum opinion in Chesapeake Energy’s bankruptcy (Case No. 20-33233), granting Chesapeake’s motion to reject its contract to sell gas to ETC Texas Pipeline. The Bankruptcy Code allows a debtor in bankruptcy to “reject” an…