In September 2016, Oklahoma experienced a 5.6-magnitude earthquake near the town of Pawnee. The quake was the first in a series that started on the morning of Saturday September 3, 2016. While no one was severely hurt or killed during the earthquake, somey buildings suffered moderate to severe damage. The…
In an earlier blog post, we discussed the Texas fracing case that was headed to the Texas Supreme Court for further review. On April 24, 2015, the Texas Supreme Court issued its opinion in In Re Steven Lipsky, and determined that the Texas Citizens Participation Act does not require that…
There has been an ongoing debate about whether hydraulic fracturing activities for producing oil and gas have an impact on drinking water supplies near and around the fracing site. Recently, the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Science Advisory Board (SAB) raised a number of questions concerning the EPA’s June…
Recently, Ryan Sitton, who is both an engineer and one of the Texas Railroad Commission‘s Commissioners, spoke out about the false news reports concerning the Texas oil and gas industry in a commentary in the Wilson County News. Below, I reprint a pertinent portion of his comments: Headlines proclaiming that…
In what is good news for royalty owners and mineral owners in the Permian Basin in Texas, the Energy Information Administration (“EIA”) recently issued a Drilling Productivity Report that projects that output from the Permian Basin will increase by almost 3000 barrels of oil per day. The Permian Basin The…
In rereading a news release issued by the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky, I was struck again by how much money is taken in by oil and gas scam artists. The news release recounted that a California man named John G. Westine, Jr. was convicted of…
As the Texas Supreme Court noted recently, it is the responsibility of mineral owners to review their deeds carefully to ensure that the rights and reservations in the deed are what they intend and that there are no mistakes. Specifically, in Cosgrove v. Cade, the Court held that “Plainly obvious…
Good news for royalty owners in the Delaware Basin in West Texas. The Delaware Basin is a geologic formation that is well known for holding large oil fields. Guadalupe Mountains National Park in Texas and Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico are located within the Delaware Basin. The Delaware…
It is not uncommon in Texas for a landowner, for example, someone who has inherited property, to find that the property is landlocked and without access to a public road. Sometimes access to the landlocked property is offered by a friendly neighbor. However, in the absence of an adjoining property…
Last year, the Texas Supreme Court decided the case of Coyote Lake Ranch, LLC v. City of Lubbock that dealt with whether the “accommodation doctrine” should be applied to groundwater. The accommodation doctrine is actually an oil and gas doctrine, which states that absent an agreement to the contrary, an…