In Mitchell v. Map Resources, the Texas Supreme Court described the constitutional right of due process as follows: The Due Process Clause of the United States Constitution prevents the government from depriving a person of his or her “property, without due process of law.” U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1;…
Last month the Railroad Commission published proposed revisions to its rules governing the handling of oilfield waste. This is a comprehensive rewrite of its rules that had not been revised since 1984. The Commission has been working on these revisions for a year. The published proposed rules can be found…
Unitex WI, LLC v. CT Land and Cattle Co., decided by the Amarillo Court of Appeals, petition for review pending in Texas Supreme Court. CT Land and Cattle owns the surface estate of 4,000 acres in Scurry and Kent Counties. The land is subject to an oil and gas lease…
Graves Dougherty Celebrates the Life of Ben F. Vaughan, III Rembrance here. My law partner for 45 years.
Three scientists with the Department of Earth Sciences at Southern Methodist University have published the results of a study of blowouts of old wells in the Permian Basin caused by injection of produced water. The summary from the study: Wastewater, a byproduct during oil extraction, is generally injected back into…
Last week the Texas Supreme Court handed down its decision in Ammonite v. Railroad Commission, upholding the Commission’s denial of Ammonite’s MIPA application. Justice Young filed a dissenting opinion, joined by Justice Busby. The case has little implication for most mineral owners in Texas but is an important loss for…
Last December a federal court in Oklahoma issued an order in a long-continuing suit between the United States and the Osage Nation, as plaintiffs, and Enel Green Power North America. United States v. Osage Wind, LLC, et al., No. 4:14-cv-00704-JCG-JFJ (US Dist. Ct. N.D. Okla., Dec. 20, 2023) Enel’s subsidiary operates…
In Hamilton v. ConocoPhillips, the Corpus Christi Court of Appeals construed a Production Sharing Agreement – to my knowledge the first appellate court to do so. A Production Sharing Agreement is an agreement between mineral owners and an operator to allow the operator to drill a horizontal well whose lateral…
Our firm represents the Opielas, who are involved in a dispute with the Railroad Commission and Magnolia Oil & Gas over a horizontal well located partly on the Opielas’ property. The case has made its way from the Commission to the trial court in Travis County, then to the Austin…
In re Dallas County, Texas and Marian Brown, in her official capacity as Dallas County Sheriff, No. 24-0426, Texas Supreme Court, filed May 23, 2024. In 2023 the Texas legislature passed Senate Bill 1045. The bill creates a new system of “business courts” having jurisdiction of high-stakes business cases. Notably,…