The Texas Railroad Commission has published a proposed rule that will change how pipelines are classified as “common carriers” and “gas utilities.” That classification determines whether pipelines can exercise the power of eminent domain — the power to condemn rights-of-way for pipelines. In 2011, the Texas Supreme Court held in…
Mike McElroy of the Austin firm McElroy, Sullivan, Miller, Weber & Olmstead, has written an article in the Section Report of the Oil, Gas & Energy Resources Law (Spring 2014), titled “Production Allocation: Looking for a Basis for Discrimination,” defending the practice of oil and gas operators’ drilling of “allocation wells.” The term “allocation…
Austin Energy, the City of Austin’s municipally owned electric utility, recently announced a deal with Recurrent Energy to buy up to 150 megawatts of electricity from a solar farm to be constructed by Recurrent in West Texas, at 5 cents per kilowatt hour, guaranteed for 20 years. Austin Energy is…
The State of Texas and the EPA have been at loggerheads on energy policy and federal regulation for some time. The latest blast from Texas comes in response to the EPA’s new proposed regulations to limit carbon emissions from power plants. On June 2, the EPA published proposed rules that…
In the last legislative session, the Texas Legislature gave the Texas Railroad Commission money to upgrade its website. The RRC’s new GIS Viewer is now available for use. http://wwwgisp.rrc.state.tx.us/GISViewer2/ This map-based access to RRC information on wells, pipelines and records makes it much easier for the public to access RRC…
Last week, the Amarillo Court of Appeals issued its opinion inn City of Lubbock v. Coyote Lake Ranch, LLC, No. 07-14-00006-CV, holding that the accommodation doctrine did not apply to restrict the City’s use of Coyote’s land to develop the City’s groundwater under the land. In 1953, the City of…
The Texas Supreme Court last week decided Key Operating & Equipment, Inc. v. Hegar, No. 13-0156, reversing the courts below and holding that Key Operating has the right to use a road crossing Hegar’s tract to produce from a well on adjacent lands. The legal principle the Court applied is…
Investigations continue in response to complaints of alleged contamination of water wells from drilling activity in the Barnett Shale. In May, the Texas Railroad Commission issued a report of its investigation of complaints of well contamination by methane in Parker County. It concluded that “the evidence is insufficient to conclude…
In the last century in West Texas, oil and gas exploration in the Permian Basin scarred the landscape. Below is a Google Earth view of an area of Ward County in far West Texas, showing the drilling pads and roads from oil and gas development. At the time of this…
Ever heard of the Groningen gas field? Neither had I, until I read a recent article in the New York Times. It is in the Netherlands, and was discovered in 1959. The field is operated by a joint venture of Royal Dutch Shell and Exxon Mobil. Today, the field produces about…