The Texas Supreme Court recently addressed whether a lender is required to forfeit payment and interest payments made by a borrower when the lender has violated the terms of a home equity loan, and whether this a remedy is a matter of right available under the Texas Constitution or through…
Given the increase in production of natural gas in Texas, some residents end up living close to a gas compressor stations. These stations are necessary to pump natural gas under pressure over long distances, but they can be large, noisy and produce offensive odors. Some Texans who live close to…
Collecting royalties from oil and gas production is one of the ways that a Texas landowner can generate revenue from their real estate. Texas property owners who own their minerals can sign an oil and gas lease so that oil and gas can be produced from the land, in exchange…
As we discussed recently regarding the Texas Supreme Court case of Hysaw v. Dawkins, 483 SW 3d 1 (2016), old deeds, oil and gas leases, and other documents containing “1/8th royalty” clauses continue to be the source of confusion among the public, lawyers, and sometimes courts. For decades, the standard…
The question of “fractional royalty” vs “fraction of royalties” has historically been the source of enormous confusion for Texas mineral owners and oil and gas attorneys. The Texas Supreme Court recently provided more guidance on the question in the case of Hysaw v. Dawkins, 483 SW 3d 1 (2016). This…
Graph courtesy of EOG Resources EOG Resources has been experimenting with enhanced oil recovery (EOR) techniques that may be good news for Texas mineral and royalty owners. Specifically, EOG has been using injections of natural gas to increase oil production on approximately 15 wells. They report that the new technique…
A company known as Biodentify, based in the Netherlands, announced that it can help predict oil and gas deposits based on DNA in the soil just a foot beneath the surface! Specifically, the company claims that by analyzing the microbiological DNA of shallow soil samples, it can predict “sweet spots”…
Interesting to realize that United States has overtaken Saudi Arabia and Russia to become the world’s largest oil and gas producer and continues to lead in production. On April 7, 2016, the U.S. Energy Information Administration released a report showing the United States remained the world’s largest producer in 2014…
No question about it: Hurricane Harvey and its aftermath have been horrible. It will be a very long time before things return to anything like “normal” for a lot of people. One of the few things that bring a smile these days is the amount of volunteer effort going on…
What happens when a Texas family discovers that the home equity loan on their home did not satisfy the constitutional requirements for homestead liens in the Texas Constitution? In the case of Wood v. HSBC Bank, the Wood family took out a home equity loan on their home in 2004.…