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…
Congress passed the 2010 federal budget without adopting the Obama Administration’s proposal to eliminate several tax provisions favorable to the oil and gas industry, including percentage depletion and expensing of intangible drilling costs. See my earlier post discussing these tax provisions. Adam Haynes, EVP of Texas Independent Producers and Royalty Owners Association (TIPRO), was…
The Energy Information Administration has revised its forecast for 2009 U.S. industrial natural gas demand, to decline by 7.4% this year. It predicts total natural gas consumption to fall 1.8% in 2009. U.S. natural gas production is expected to decline 0.3% in 2009, and to slip 1% in 2010. EIA predicts natural gas…
Range Resources announced on April 16 that it had completed a horizontal well in the Barnett Shale in southern Tarrant County that produced an average of 9.6 mmcf per day for the first 30 days of its production. This would be the largest Barnett Shale well completed to date. Range currently…
Seismic surveys have become the primary tool of exploration companies in the continental United States, both onshore and offshore. 3-D seismic surveys have lowered finding costs and allloowed exploration for reserves not locatable by other means, revolutionizing the industry. Below is a non-scientific explanation of how seismic surveys work. A…