The San Antonio Court of Appeals recently issued an interesting opinion regarding a well operator’s claim that H2S/CO2 from a nearby injection well damaged its leased minerals. The case has been appealed to the Texas Supreme Court and oral argument has been scheduled for December 2020. The case is Swift…
The Texas Eleventh Court of Appeals decided yet another “continuous development” case in which the lessee tries to wiggle out of its obligations under the oil and gas lease with a strained interpretation of the lease terms (although in this case, both the lessor and the lessee were oil companies).…
The Texas Court of Appeals in El Paso, in HJSA No. 3, Ltd. P’ship v. Sundown Energy LP, issued a decision siding with the landowner on the interpretation of an oil and gas lease regarding the meaning of “continuous development“. The oil and gas lease contained two paragraphs related to…
In Piranha Partners et al v. Joe B. Neuhoff et al, the Texas Supreme Court examined a written assignment of an overriding royalty interest in minerals produced from land subject to an oil and gas lease in Wheeler County, Texas. The Neuhoffs claimed the assignment conveyed an interest only in…
The Texas rule against perpetuities (the “Rule”) was something all lawyers learned about in law school, but it seemed at the time like a concept we would not run into very often in real life law practice. Unfortunately, it comes up regularly in connection with Texas oil and gas leases…
The Texas 14th Court of Appeals recently interpreted a pipeline easement and that interpretation may have application for many other pipeline easements in existence in Texas. The case is Texas Land & Cattle II, Ltd. v ExxonMobil Pipeline Company. Texas Land & Cattle (TLC) owned real property in Harris County,…
The Texas Supreme Court decided a case recently involving an assignment of an overriding royalty interest (ORRI) in minerals located in Wheeler County, Texas. That case is Piranha Partners et al v. Joe Neuhoff et al. In 1975, Neuhoff Oil & Gas purchased an undivided two-thirds interest in a mineral…
The Commissioners of the Texas Railroad Commission recently voted unanimously to amend Rule 3.40, which has to do with the assignment of acreage to pooling and proration units. The current rule provides that “… acreage assigned to a well for drilling and development, or for allocation of allowable, shall not…
I recently had occasion to review the Texas Supreme Court’s decision on a long-running dispute between BP America and Laddex, Ltd. The case is centered around a disagreement of the terms in a decades old lease and its result has been significant for the energy industry. The case, known as …
Recently the Texas Supreme Court decided an interesting case in which it examined whether a will had given a surface estate or a mineral estate to the beneficiaries of the will. In ConocoPhillips et al v. Leon Oscar Ramirez Jr. et al, the testatrix, Leonor Juan, executed a will in…