In a bit of welcome news for Texas mineral owners, according to the metrics calculated by Baker Hughes, the oil and gas drilling rig count for Texas and the United States is going up. Specifically, the rig count has gone up by 13 rigs since October 9, 2020. This represents…
In August 2020, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) issued the second part of its report on the Wolfcamp shale play of the Midland sub-basin section of the Permian Basin, which you can read here. The report is an interesting analysis of the geology of this area. The accumulations in the…
There is a new book out in September 2020 by Daniel Yergin. As some of you know, he is the author of The Prize (which won a Pulitzer Prize) and The Quest, both of which are essential reading for anyone seeking an understanding of the history and nature of the…
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…
Many Texas mineral interest and royalty owners have seen their royalty checks shrink or disappear altogether in the second quarter of 2020. The covid crisis caused prices to slip to nearly zero in some cases and in response, in April, May and June 2020, many operators shut in wells that…
The Texas Supreme Court recently heard a petition for mandamus requesting relief from some of Governor Abbott‘s executive orders that suspended the right of “nonessential” business owners to make a living. The petition was denied for lack of jurisdiction. However, the concurring opinion by Justice John Phillip Devine (that you…
There seem to be more and more frequent commercials advertising services to protect homeowners from “home title fraud”. These commercials are not talking about fraudulent applications for mortgages, although that probably happens frequently. Instead, they are talking about someone who forges a deed to themselves and then tries to…
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…