Sent to me by a friend: Edgar Freeman Smith was the youngest child of a circuit preacher. By age eleven he had to work in a coal mine to support his widowed mother. When he was eighteen they lost their home to foreclosure. People told him to learn a trade…
My clients regularly complain of flares from wells on their property. Most leases don’t require royalty payments on flared gas, so their royalty is going up in smoke. Flares often don’t function properly, resulting in emissions of toxic gases. Flares make noise. The Environmental Defense Fund recently released an excellent…
This is my 500th blog post. My first post was on March 23, 2009, the first of three posts about deductibility of post-production costs from royalties. Since then I’ve written about post-production costs twenty-three times. I decided to start this blog as a way to provide information about developments in…
Oil and gas cases I’m following that are now pending before the Texas Supreme Court: 16-0107, Hill v. Shamoun & Norman Fight over attorneys’ fees related to litigation of trust from H.L. Hunt Estate. Case has been argued. I wrote about the case in a prior post. 16-0804, Perryman v.…
Senator Dan Patrick and Speaker Joe Strauss have issued their list of interim charges for the next legislative session – issues that committees must study during the interim between sessions. Those interim charges may be found here: SenateInterimCharges_2017_Round_1_FINAL House-interim-charges-85th Charges that may be of interest to Texas land and mineral…
On this day in 1787 Alexander Hamilton, under the pen name “Publius,” published the first of the 85 letters to newspapers later named the Federalist Papers, written by Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay, to argue for adoption of the U.S. Constitution. We’ve been arguing about it ever since. Hamilton…
Beginning in 2015, earthquakes in Oklahoma began to be linked with increased injections of water produced from oil and gas wells. State regulatory authorities were slow to react. Operators of large injection wells like Harold Hamm and his Continental Resources pushed back, pressuring the University of Oklahoma to dismiss scientists…
The Texas Supreme Court heard argument last week in a fee dispute between Albert Hill Jr., an H.L. Hunt heir, and one of his attorneys, Gregory Shamoun. Albert G. Hill, Jr. v. Shamoun & Norman, LLP, No. 16-0107. The Dallas Court of Appeals reversed a take-nothing judgment and awarded Shamoun…
The DC Court of Appeals and the US District Court for the Northern District of California have struck down orders of the EPA and the Bureau of Land Management postponing compliance dates for the Obama administration’s rules requiring the oil and gas industry to monitor and reduce methane emissions. Both…
On September 22, the Texas Supreme Court refused to reconsider its opinion in BP America v. Red Deer Resources, No. 15.0569 – after some 16 amicus briefs and letters were filed urging the court to grant Red Deer’s motion for rehearing. The Court addressed the construction of a shut-in royalty…