I just watched a hearing of the House Science and Technology Committee on efforts to reduce methane emissions from the US oil and gas industry. Four experts testified: Dr. David Lyon from Environmental Defense Fund, Riley Duren with Carbon Mapper, Dr. Brian Anderson, director of the National Environmental Technology Laboratory,…
Four interesting recent cases on oil and gas issues: Energy Transfer Fuel v. 660 North Freeway, 2021 WL 1569702 Energy Transfer owns an easement across North Freeway’s property in Fort Worth. The easement provided that the owner “hereby reserves the right to use the land in any manner that will…
The Texas Supreme Court handed down its opinion in Mitchell v. MAP Resources, Inc., setting aside a default judgment in a tax foreclosure suit granted more than 16 years ago, on the ground that the defendant’s due process rights were violated when she was served by posting notice on the…
A great article appears in the March Section Report of the Oil, Gas and Energy Resources Law section report, by Jacqueline Weaver, Professor Emeritus, University of Houston Law Center: “The Railroad Commission’s New Duties to Keep Texans Warm: Winter Storm Uri Forces Change.” Here are some excerpts: The throughput of…
Almost a year ago, a district court in Travis County ruled that the Texas Railroad Commission had violated Texas’ Administrative Procedure Act by issuing a well permit to Magnolia Oil & Gas after informally adopting rules for issuance of permits for allocation wells and “PSA” wells (production-sharing-agreement wells) without complying…
The Cockrell School of Engineering at the University of Texas in Austin this week issued a report, three years in the making, “Don’t Mess with Texas: Getting the Lone Star State to Net-Zero by 2050.” The study was co-authored by Vibrant Clean Energy and the University of Colorado Boulder. Funding…
I first wrote about earthquakes caused by injection wells in 2015. After earthquake events large enough to be felt in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, the Legislature funded a $4.4 million study by UT’s Bureau of Economic Geology to monitor quake activity in areas where disposal wells were active. Because of…
On this day in 1861 Georgia Senator Alexander Stephens gave a speech, known as the Cornerstone Speech, in Savannah Georgia, just after he became the provisional vice president of the Confederacy. Less than a month later the Confederates fired on a federal fort in Charleston Harbor, starting the Civil War.…
Talos Energy announced that it has signed a lease with the Texas General Land Office for more than 40,000 acres offshore to store CO2 captured from industrial sites along the coast. Talos said it is capable of storing up to 275 million metric tons of Co2 and is “the first…
Foote v. Texcel Exploration, decided by the 11th Court of Appeals in Eastland, provides a lesson to surface owners. Foote grazed cattle on land in Knox County under a lease with Styles. He put 650 head of cattle on the property, grazing winter wheat. Texcel operated oil and gas wells…