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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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