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I recently ran across a publication containing two stories by O. Henry, purchased at the Capitol Visitors Center in Austin. The stories center on the Texas General Land Office, where O. Henry (then William Sydney Porter) worked as a draftsman between 1887 and 1891. The stories led me down a rabbit hole of the history of the Texas General Land Office.

The General Land Office is the oldest Texas state agency, established by the Republic of Texas in 1836 to “superintend, execute, and perform all acts touching or respecting the public lands of Texas.” When Texas entered the Union in 1845, the United States allowed it to keep its public lands rather than taking those lands in exchange for assuming Texas’ public debt. The GLO was responsible for granting patents as land was settled and sold. The history of land grants in Texas is complex and colorful, including Spanish and Mexican land grants in South Texas and to Stephen F. Austin and other empresarios who settled the land before Texas independence. The records of those Spanish and Mexican land grants, and all other grants and surveys of state lands, are housed in the General Land Office. Many of those records, including historical maps and surveys, have been digitized and can be viewed online at the GLO website.

After Texas won its independence from Mexico, Columbia became the nation’s capital and its archives were housed there. The records were moved to Houston when Congress declared Houston the capital of Texas in 1836. Then in 1839, then-President Mirabeau B. Lamar convinced Congress to authorize the establishment of a planned city, Austin, to be the nation’s capital, and the archives were moved there.

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I ran across a fascinating opinion from the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals that provides a window into Wyoming history. Iron Bar Holdings v. Cape, No. 23-8043, decided March 18.

The facts are these: Iron Bar Holdings owns a ranch in southwest Wyoming covering 50 square miles. But within its boundaries are some 11,000 acres of federal and state public lands, some of which are completely enclosed by Iron Bar’s lands. In 2020, three hunters from Missouri decided to travel to Wyoming to hunt elk on public land within Iron Bar’s ranch. They could get to one section wholly surrounded by Iron Bar sections only by crossing over the corner touching two sections of federal land. So they stepped across the corner from Section 14 to Section 24, without setting foot on Section 13 or Section 23.

iron-bar-1As stated by the court, “Iron Bar is not friendly to corner-crossers.” It erected no trespassing signs at the corners, and its employees harassed the hunters. But in 2020 they did hunt on Section 24. They returned in 2021 to do the same, but this time Iron Bar convinced the local prosecuting attorney to prosecute the hunters for criminal trespass. They were acquitted in a jury trial. Not satisfied, Iron Bar sued the hunters for civil trespass, seeking $9 million in damages. It is this civil case that eventually ended up in the 10th Circuit.

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In Hamilton v. ConocoPhillips, the Corpus Christi Court of Appeals construed a Production Sharing Agreement – to my knowledge the first appellate court to do so.

A Production Sharing Agreement is an agreement between mineral owners and an operator to allow the operator to drill a horizontal well whose lateral will be located partly on the leased premises and partly on other lands. Generally, such agreements provide that the allocation will be based on the number of productive lateral feet of the well on each tract crossed by the well. If a well crosses Tract A and Tract B, and 60% of the productive lateral is on Tract A, then the parties agree that the royalty owners in Tract A will be paid royalty on 60% of the production from the well. Such an agreement is a form of combining multiple tracts to produce from a single well–essentially a form of pooling with a different method of allocation.

In Hamilton, Lloyd Hamilton owned a mineral interest in the original Hamilton Ranch in DeWitt County, covering some 5,000 acres, which the Hamilton family leased to Burlington Resources Oil & Gas (now a subsidiary of ConocoPhillips). After the lease was signed the family partitioned the land and Lloyd received a separate surface tract, subject to the lease. The family then signed a Production Sharing Agreement allowing Burlington to drill wells located partly on the Ranch.

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Below is an article from Dr. Tinker, written in advance of his upcoming lecture at the International Energy Summit on June 1, used with permission.

When it comes to managing Energy, optionality is vital

Dr. Scott Tinker, Director, Bureau of Economic Geology, The University of Texas at Austin, talks about the challenges we face in addressing the multiple and varied needs of energy markets throughout the world and how we need to better understand all the vectors involved if we are going to succeed. He will be delivering the “Boulos Lecture Series” at the forthcoming International Energy Summit (IES) hosted by the AIEN in Miami from May 30 to June 1.

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John McFarland
 Graves, Dougherty, Hearon & Moody, P.C.
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