The Texas Supreme Court has been asked to review a case decided by the Eastland Court of Appeals, Lesley v. Veterans Land Board, that raises important questions about the duty of a mineral owner to owners of non-executive mineral interests. If the Court decides to take the case, the outcome…
A study ( Armendariz Study.pdf) published last February by Al Armendariz, an engineering professor at Southern Methodist University, concluded that gas drilling in the Barnett Shale contributes about as much air pollution to the D-FW area as emissions from cars and trucks. Dr. Armendariz’s study was financed by the Environmental Defense Fund. Dr. Armendariz…
As landowners have become more sophisticated in their negotiations of oil and gas leases, they have begun to insist on the inclusion of a “continuous operations” or “continuous drilling” clause in their leases. The idea behind such clause is that the lessee should have a reasonable time to fully develop…
The Texas Railroad Commission handed down an interesting order last August that may have broad application for operators’ use of Texas’ Mineral Interest Pooling Act to force unleased mineral owners into pooled units. In Docket No. 09-0252375, Finley Resources applied under the MIPA to form a pooled unit in the Barnett…
Last week I attended an Energy Syposium sponsored by South Texas Money Management, Ltd. in San Antonio. One of the speakers was Amy Myers Jaffe, who is the Wallace S. Wilson Fellow in Energy Studies at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University and associate director of…
Boone Pickens’ efforts to promote natural gas as an alternative to gasoline in vehicles seems to be gaining momentum. In a column published by the Huffington Post, Pickens said that the recent advances in extraction of natural gas from shales is a “game-changer.” “One study estimates that we have enough natural…
Royalty owners should be aware that they are entitled to severance tax refunds on gas wells drilled in certain “tight sand” formations, including the Barnett Shale. If a field is designated as a “tight sand,” Texas law provides for a reduction in severance tax from 7.5% to 2% for a period…
Conveyances of minerals in Texas usually describe the interest conveyed or reserved as an interest in “oil, gas or other minerals.” Texas courts have struggled mightily to try to discern what the parties meant by the term “other minerals.” If the parties did not specifically name a particular mineral, such as coal…
Below is an interesting chart published by the U.S. Energy and Informaton Administration, showing how the U.S. used energy in the U.S. in 2007: The sources of energy are on the left, the sectors of the economy that consume energy are on the right. The lines connecting supply sources and…
The Texas Railroad Commission has denied Chesapeake Energy’s request for permission to produce its Ramey 1H well in Tarrant County, because the well was drilled in violation of RRC spacing rules. Chesapeake drilled the horizontal well with a 3,553-foot lateral, even though its permit was for a lateral of only 1,839 feet. The…