Last April the Fort Worth Court of Appeals issued its opinion in Bluestone Natural Resources II, LLC v. Randle, No. 02-18-00271-CV, 2019 WL 1716415. The Court decided that, under Randle’s lease, Bluestone could not deduct post-production costs and owed royalty on plant fuel and compressor fuel. Bluestone has petitioned the…
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 Cynthia and George Mitchell Foundation has funded research resulting in a report, “Emissions in the Stream: Estimating the Greenhouse Gas Impacts of an Oil and Gas Boom,” by to professors at UT Austin. The report focuses on downstream sources of methane emissions, and will be followed by a report…
Plaintiffs Kenneth Lyle and Linda Morrison have appealed the dismissal of their suit against Midway Solar to the El Paso Court of Appeals, No. 08-19-00216-CV. Lyle and Morrison own the minerals under 315 acres in Pecos County. Midway Solar has constructed a solar farm on 215 of those acres. Typically,…
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…
Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy recently published an Issue Brief, “Reducing Oilfield Methane Emissions Can Create New US Gas Export Opportunities,” written by Gabriel Collins, Baker Botts Fellow in Energy & Environmental Regulatory Affairs at the Institute. Collins argues that instead of flaring gas, it should be liquefied…
The fight between Williams and Exco over whether Exco can continue to flare gas from its wells has moved to District Court in Travis County. Exco filed an application with the Texas Railroad Commission for permission to flare gas from more than 130 Eagle Ford oil wells on the Briscoe…
A friend recently told me about two great websites: www.oilystuffblog.com, and www.shaleprofile.com. The first is a fun read authored by Mike Shelman, “Oily Humor & Short Stories About a Very Long, Oily Life.” Here’s a post about “BOE,” or “barrels of oil equivalent.” Shale Profile is a subscription site, but…
Interesting graphics in article from Bloomberg, “After Decades of Fracking, We Finally Know How the Fluid Spreads Underground.”