Oil and Gas Lawyer Blog

The San Antonio Business Journal has a good website aggregating news about the Eagle Ford Shale:  http://www.bizjournals.com/sanantonio/blog/eagle-ford-shale-insight/ 

I recently have learned of a suit brought by landowners against EOG Resources involving “allocation wells,” of which I have written before. The case is Spartan Texas Six Capital Partners, Ltd., Spartan Texas Six-Celina, Ltd., and Dion Menser v. EOG Resources, Inc., Cause No. 2011-27476, in the 11th Judicial District…

Last week, the Fourth Court of Appeals in San Antonio issued its opinion in Chesapeake v. Hyder.pdf, on gas royalties owed to the Hyder family for production in Johnson and Tarrant Counties, in the Barnett Shale. The court upheld a judgment against Chesapeake for more than a million dollars, including…

Ceres, a nonprofit focusing on climate change, water scarcity and sustainability, has issued a report, Hydraulic Fracturing & Water Stress: Water Demand by the Numbers, a Shareholder, Lender & Operator Guide to Water Sourcing.  Here are some excerpts: ________________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________________    ____________________________________________________________________________________  

As drilling activity in the onshore US continues to grow, more and more attention is being paid to the environmental effects of exploration and production.  Media stories abound about groundwater contamination, the demand for fresh water from hydraulic fracturing, increased air emissions from exploration and production, controversy over pipeline condemnation…

The Eagle Ford in South Texas is big news, even in California. http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-texas-oil-boom-20140216,0,7621618.story#axzz2tdDZOvWY 

In the later chapters of The Quest, Daniel Yergin summarizes the history of the internal combustion engine.  He begins by recounting a meeting of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison at a convention in August 1896, at which they sat together. Ford had just built his first gasoline-powered “quadricycle.”  He sketched out his…

Julia Trigg-Crawford, a landowner in Lamar County, has asked the Texas Supreme Court to hear her case arguing that TransCanada has no right to condemn her property for the Keystone XL Pipeline.  The Crawford Family Farm Partnership v. TransCanada Keystone Pipeline, L.P., No. 13-0866. Although other segments of the pipeline…

Here is a graph from the Energy Information Administration showing the Texas crude miracle: Texas now produces 36% of US oil production.  The graph below is from a Reuters article, showing the resultant drop in US crude imports: 

The New York Times reported recently that the number of mobile or “walking” drilling rigs in operation now exceeds the number of conventional rigs, by 650 to 500. “Pad drilling” — the drilling of multiple wells from a single pad site — has now become the norm in unconventional plays,…