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Two recent articles by a New York Times reporter, Ian Urbina, have caused strong reactions among the industry and those following shale plays in the U.S. Urbina’s articles may be found here and here. Urbina’s basic theme is that the new reserves of natural gas attributed to shale plays are not real, but are a “Ponzi scheme” created by overestimates of reserves by companies desiring to pump up their stock prices. Urbina bases his conclusions on emails from different industry players and analysts, including the Energy Information Administration, PNC Wealth Management and IHS Drilling Data, and anonymous sources in the industry, including Chesapeake and Enron. Links to these emails are in the articles. Many of them date back to 2009. “In the e-mails, energy executives, industry lawyers, state geologists and market analysts voice skepticism about lofty forecasts and question whether companies are intentionally, and even illegally, overstating the productivity of their wells and the size of their reserves. Many of these e-mails also suggest a view that is in stark contrast to more bullish public comments made by the industry, in much the same way that insiders have raised doubts about previous financial bubbles,” says Urbina.

Urbina’s articles have provoked strong responses.

  • ExxonMobil responded with a post on its “Perspective” blog page:   
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Bills of Interest from the Texas Legislature’s now-completed session:

  • SB 652 – re-authorized the Texas Railroad Commission for two more years. The Lege was unable to agree on changes recommended by the Sunset Commission to reform the RRC. See my discussion of Sunset recommendations here and here. Legislators could not agree on a provision changing the terms of the three commissioners from 6 to 4 years, and could not agree on a provision transferring hearings involving enforcement and gas utility rates to the State Office of Administrative Hearings.  See story here.
  • HB 3134 – Revises earlier legislation (HB 2259, passed in the previous session) that made it more difficult for an operator to renew its operating license if it had unplugged wells not in compliance with rules. The revision gives the operators more time to achieve compliance, and will make it more difficult to require operators to plug inactive wells. See my description of HB 2259 here.
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Counsel for the plaintiffs in BP v. Marshall filed unusual motions for rehearing after the Texas Supreme Court reversed the judgments of the courts below awarding substantial damages for fraud. See my discussion of the Supreme Court’s decision here. The Marshalls’ attorneys’ motion for rehearing accuses the court of engaging in “de novo review of a jury finding,” exceeding the court’s constitutional authority, violating the Marshalls’ constitutional right to a jury trial, ignoring uncontradicted expert testimony, and ignoring its own prior precedent. The motion calls the court’s reasoning “disingenuous.” The Vaquillas attorneys’ motion for rehearing says that “the decisional process has gone awry,” and the court “has not decided, or even recognized, the main issue in the Vaquillas-Wagner case.” From the Vaquillas motion for rehearing:

“The Opinion resolves the BP-Marshall dispute on a legal insufficiency point, but the Opinion never uses the phrase ‘standard of review,’ never alludes to the standard of review, and never undertakes to apply one.”

“Perhaps the Court has in mind an explanation — maybe even a devastating explanation — for making the evidence that supports the verdict all vanish. Very well, then, but the Opinion ought to opine on these things, rather than leaving the world wondering.”

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A study group sponsored by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has issued a report, The Future of Natural Gas, the fourth in a series of MIT multidisciplinary reports examinging the role of various energy sources and the effects of carbon dioxide emissions restraints.  The full 170-page report can be found here. The report analyzes the relative carbon footprint of natural gas compared to other fuels and the environmental impact of the development of shale gas reserves, among other topics. Here are some excerpts:

Major conclusions of the report:

  • “There are abundant supplies of natural gas in the world, and many
    of these supplies can be developed and produced at relatively low cost.”
  • “The role of natural gas in the world is likely to continue to
    expand under almost all circumstances, as a result of its availability,
    its utility and its comparatively low cost.”
  • Natural gas is “one of the most cost-effective means by which to maintain energy supplies while reducing CO2 emissions.”

Regarding gas’s carbon footprint, the report concludes that “Among
the fossil fuels, it has the lowest carbon intensity, emitting less CO2
per unit of energy generated than other fossil fuels. It burns cleanly
and efficiently, with very few non-carbon emissions. Unlike oil, natural gas generally requires limited processing to prepare it for end use.”

Regarding potential natural gas supply:

  • “The mean projection of [worldwide] remaining recoverable resource
    [of natural gas] in this report is 16,200 Tcf, 150 times current annual
    global natural gas consumption …. Of the mean projection,
    approximately 9,000 Tcf could be developed economically with a natural
    gas price at or below $4/Million British Thermal units (MMBtu) at the
    export point.”
  • “The mean projection of recoverable shale gas resource in this
    report is approximately 640 Tcf, with low and high projections of 420
    Tcf and 870 Tcf, respectively. Of the mean projection, approximately 400 Tcf could be economically developed with a natural gas price at or
    below $6/MMBtu at the wellhead.”

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Fracking has become more and more a topic in the general media and part of the state and federal environmental energy agenda, with new stories appearing daily. A sample:

Secretary of Energy Steveb Chu has appointed an advisory panel, officially called the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board’s subcommittee on natural gas, to study the environmental issues around hydraulic fracturing and shale gas production.  Members of the subcommittee are John Deutch, former head of the CIA during the Clinton administration, in the Department of Energy during the Carter administration, now a professor at MIT, and former board member of Schlumberger, Ltd.; Daniel Yergin, IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates Chairman; Susan Tierney, Chair of the board of the Energy Foundation; Stephen Holditch, chair of the Department of Petroleum Engineering at Texas A&M; Fred Krupp, President of Environmental Defense Fund; Kathleen McGinty, former head of Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection; and Mark Zoback, geophysics professor at Stanford University. Steven Chu, Secretary of Energy, has charged the subcommittee to make recommendations on ways to improve safety of fracking in 90 days, and offer advice to other agencies within six months on how they can better protect the environment from shale gas drilling.  http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/677-e2-wire/164057-overnight-energy-fracking . Beginnings of the subcommittee’s work have not shown promise: at the first meeting of the committee, Dusty Horwitt of the Environmental Working Group said its chairman John Deutch should resign because of his former ties to Schlumberger and Cheniere Energy. On the other side, Republicans including Darrel Issa (R-Calif), chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, have said that Chu’s subcommittee is composed primarily of Democratic appointees hostile to drilling interests. 

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The Texas Supreme Court has once again overturned a jury verdict in favor of royalty owners, finding “no evidence” to support the jury’s finding. The court’s opinion in the case, BP America Production Company, Atlantic Richfield Company and Vastar Resources, Inc. v. Stanley G. Marshall, Jr., et al., No. 09-0399, was issued last week. The case evidences the Court’s continued hostility to royalty owners’ claims of lease termination.

The important facts are as follows:


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Researchers at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University have written an article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences titled “Methane contamination of drinking water accompanying gas-well drilling and hydraulic fracturing,” which finds “systematic evidence for methane contamination of drinking water associated with shale-gas extraction” in the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania and New York. The article has already elicited a strong response from the industry. To my knowledge, this is the first scientifically based study finding a correllation between the drilling of shale wells and the contamination of aquifers.

 

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Other than the oil and gas lease itself, the division order is undoubtedly the most common legal instrument mineral owners are asked to sign. Mineral owners should know the purpose of a division order, what rights and obligations it imposes on them, and the division order’s relation to the oil and gas lease.

First, I should say that the law and practice regarding division orders varies from state to state. I practice in Texas, so what follows relates only to the use of division orders in Texas.

Historically, there has been much controversy and litigation in Texas about division orders and their effect. As a result, in 1991 the Legislature passed a statute governing the use of division orders. The statute was amended in 1995, 1997 and 1999. It is now Chapter 91, subchapter J of the Texas Natural Resources Code, commonly called the Division Order Statute. So the law applicable to division orders in Texas is the court-made law plus the division order statute.

The main purpose of a division order is to protect the payor of the proceeds of production from double liability. The company issuing the division order is requiring the royalty owner to (1) verify that the royalty owner’s decimal interest set out on the division order is correct and (2) agree that the company can make payments based on that decimal interest until notified by the royalty owner that the ownership has been changed. By the division order, the royalty owner indemnifies the payor against liability to third parties who claim to own the interest being paid to the royalty owner.

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The April issue of Discover, published by Kalmbach Publishing Co., contains an article on the potential environmental effects of hydraulic fracturing in gas shales, “Fracking Nation,” by Linda Marsa. Much of the article simply repeats allegations being made by environmental groups and landowners of alleged groundwater contamination by shale wells. But the article mentions four newer topics and recent allegations being made by opponents of shale gas development:

 

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Items of interest recently in the news:

On March 25, the Texas Railroad Commission adopted its examiners’ recommended decision finding that Range Resources was not responsible for water-well contamination in Parker County, Texas.  (For my previous posts on this controversy, go here and here.)  The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which had previously entered a cease-and-desist order against Range based on its investigation of the water well contamination, issued a statement standing by its findings:  “The decision by the Texas Railroad Commission is not supported by EPA’s independent, scientific investigation, which concluded that Range Rsources Corporation and Range Production Company have contributed to the contamination of homeowners’ drinking water wells.”  EPA has posted the full record of its investigation of Range on its website.  EPA has filed a federal suit against Range to enforce its order. “EPA stands by the order issued to Range Resources and seeks to secure Range’s full compliance,” said EPA’s statement.  Range has filed a motion in that suit to dismiss the case, based on the Railroad Commission’s findings. Railroad Commissioner Michael Williams said that “I see this as sort of a cavalier attempt by the federal government to reach its arms into our state’s jurisdictions.” Commissioner Elizabeth Jones said after the RRC hearing that Range’s operations “have not contaminated and will not contaminate” the water wells in question. Steven Lipsky, one of the water well owners who believes that Range is responsible for the contamination, said: “It’s a corrupt system. It’s kind of sad.”

Chesapeake Energy has entered into two more agreements to shed part of its acreage positions, one in Texas and one in Arkansas.  Chesapeake agreed to sell all of its Fayetteville Shale leases in Arkansas to mining giant BHP Billiton for $4.75 billion cash. Chesapeake entered into an agreement with Clayton Williams Energy to transfer 75% of its 75,000 acres of leases in the Wolfbone play in Reeves County to Williams, in exchange for Williams’ agreement to drill at least 20 wells in the first year, with an option to drill 20 more earning wells every year over the next four years.

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