In Bell v. Chesapeake Energy Corporation, No. 04-18-00129-CV, the San Antonio Court of Appeals heard a permissive accelerated appeal of an issue addressed by the trial court in a multi-district litigation brought by many royalty owners in the Eagle Ford against Chesapeake, In re: Chesapeake Eagle Ford Royalty Litigation, involving…
Like most subjects, understanding oil and gas law is often a matter of knowing the terminology – WI, RI, ORRI, NPRI. These terms are often used in a confusing way and the definitions sometimes overlap. So I’m going to try to clear things up. It all starts with the mineral…
Tiffany Dowell, author of the Texas Agriculture Law Blog, has a great post providing resources for landowners faced with a pipeline wanting to cross their land. You can view it here. She also has a good checklist for landowners negotiating pipeline easements, which you can download here. And you can…
Last month the Environmental Defense Fund released an analysis of NOAA satellite data estimating volumes of gas flared in the Permian Basin in 2017. Its findings: operators report half of the amount of gas actually flared. 104 Bcf of gas is enough to serve all needs of Texas’ seven largest…
The cover story in The Economist this week is titled “Crude awakening – The truth about Big Oil and climate change.” It comes in the wake of the introduction by a group of new Democratic Congress members of a proposed “Green New Deal” to tackle climate change. When I began…
The big guys are moving into the Permian Basin. Chevron, which owns substantial fee minerals in the Permian, saw its profits jump 19 percent in the fourth quarter, increasing its oil production 71 percent in the Permian to 310,000 bbls/day. Chevron’s completions in 2018: In its DR State Wise Unit…
Tiffany Dowell, author of the Texas Agriculture Law Blog at Texas A&M, gave me permission to re-publish her excellent article on what landowners should consider when a pipeline company asks permission to survey. Here is her article. The only thing I would add is that the landowner should find out…
I ran across an excellent article, “A Primer on the Geopolitics of Oil,” by Anand Toprani, assistant professor of Strategy & Policy at the U.S. Naval War College. He has a book in the works, Oil and the Great Powers: Britain and Germany, 1914-1945. Oil has been a commodity different…
The Energy Information Administration appears to be at work during the government shutdown. Yesterday it released its regularly scheduled weekly reports. Among them: You can sign up for an email from EIA to receive a link to all of its reports at https://www.eia.gov/tools/emailupdates/?src=email .
Morningstar has published a report analyzing oil pipeline and refining capacities along the Texas Gulf Coast – “Pipeline Plans Suggest Tsunami of Crude Exports – Midstream companies looking to double Gulf Coast shipments.” pipeline-plans-suggest-tsunami-of-crude-exports-FINAL If all planned pipelines are built and run to capacity, new lines “would carry as much…