Oil and Gas Lawyer Blog

Last week the San Antonio Court of Appeals decided Lightning Oil Company v. Anadarko, No. 04-14-001152-CV, a case involving “mineral trespass.”  What is interesting about the case is what the court did not decide.

Lightning Oil Company owns two oil and gas leases covering 3,250 acres within the Briscoe Ranch in Dimmit County. The Briscoe Ranch owns the surface but not the minerals in this 3,250 acres. To the south of Lightning’s leases is the Chaparral Wildlife Management Area, a wildlife sanctuary managed by Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. TPWD owns the surface and 1/6 mineral interest in the Chaparral WMA. The Light family (some of whom own Lightning Oil) own the other 5/6 mineral interest. Anadarko holds oil and gas leases on the Chaparral WMA.

The TPWD lease to Anadarko prevents use of the surface of the Chaparral WMA for oil and gas wells except with TPWD consent, and says that Anadarko must use off-site drilling locations “when prudent and feasible.” Anadarko made an agreement with Briscoe Ranch to use the surface of the Ranch to drill horizontal wells under the Chaparral WMA. The first location Anadarko chose is located on the land covered by the Lightning Oil Company leases. So Anadarko proposed to drill a horizontal well from a surface location on Lightning’s lease; the well would penetrate the Eagle Ford formation on Lightning’s lease, but no perforations, or “take points,” in the well would be located on Lightning’s lease.

Last week the Texas Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Steadfast Financial v. Bradshaw, No. 13-0199. The case presents the court with another opportunity to grapple with an issue that Texas courts have struggled with since the court first addressed it in 1937 – what duty does the owner of the mineral estate owe to a non-participating royalty owner?

The term “non-participating royalty owner” is the name commonly given to a royalty interest in minerals created by a grant or reservation in a deed.  “Non-participating” is really redundant; it means that the holder of the royalty estate has no right to lease the mineral estate or to receive any bonus for a lease.  In fact, that is true of all royalty interests. A better name for this type of royalty interest might be “fee royalty interest,” to distinguish it from a royalty interest reserved by the mineral owner in an oil and gas lease.

The owner of a fee royalty interest, having no right to lease or to drill wells, is dependent on the owner of the mineral estate out of which his/her royalty interest must be paid; the royalty interest has no value unless the mineral interest is leased and wells are drilled. In recognition of this fact, court decisions have imposed a duty on the mineral owner to protect the royalty owner’s interest. How this duty is defined, and in what situations the duty is imposed, have been issues Texas courts have struggled with for many years. The cases that have addressed this issue over the years show how the common law develops — very slowly, and with varied results for the litigants involved.

Trail Enterprises’ efforts to collect an inverse condemnation judgment against the City of Houston have finally come to an end. The US Supreme Court has refused to hear its case. Trail Enterprises’ story is instructive to parties who may be thinking of challenging cities’ decisions to ban drilling within their boundaries.

The dispute has a long history.  Lake Houston is a major source of drinking water for the City of Houston. In 1967, the City passed an ordinance restricting the drilling of new oil and gas wells in a “control area” around the lake. That restriction has remained in place except for an eleven-month gap in 1996-97, when the lake was annexed into the City and the City passed a new ordinance protecting the lake. 

In 1995, Trail Enterprises, an owner of mineral interests in the restricted area around the lake, sued the City, claiming that the 1967 ordinance restriction amounted to a “taking” of the mineral interests in violation of the US Constitution. The trial court dismissed that suit, and the Houston Court of appeals affirmed. Trail Enters., Inc. v. City of Houston, 957 S.W.2d 625 (Tex.App.-Houston [14th Dist.] 1997, writ denied). In 1999, Trail sued again, this time arguing that the City’s 1997 ordinance resulted in a taking of its property. The trial court held that the ordinance did not constitute a taking. This time the Houston Court of Appeals reversed and remanded the case for a trial. Trail Enters., Inc. v. City of Houston, 2002 WL 389448 (Tex.App.-Houston [14th Dist.] Mar. 14, 2002, no pet.). But the parties decided to dismiss that case.