Many Texas landowners have old electric line easements on their property with companies that are no longer in business, such as the old Texas Electric Co. AEP Texas, Inc. and/or Southwestern Electric Power Company (“SWEPCO”) now own many of these easements. These easements are often incredibly vague, especially regarding what…
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…
A well operated by Chesapeake Energy Corporation experienced a fiery blowout on Thursday, January 30, 2020. The well, the Daniel H 1 H, is located in Burleson County, Texas near Deanville. The well is in an area where Chesapeake is drilling long lateral well bores to develop Eagle Ford shale…
The Texas Supreme Court decided an interesting case last week regarding easements. The case was Copano Energy LLC et al. v. Stanley D. Bujnoch, Life Estate, et al. One of the interesting aspects of this case was the part that emails played in the transaction. The plaintiffs, who were the…
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…
Texas has been, unfortunately, home to a number of oil and gas scams over the years. One of the most common is the company who wants to buy your mineral interests and who has you sign a deed before they pay you. Once they have a signed deed in hand,…
I negotiate many power line easements on behalf of property owners each year. Generally, the utility company wants to pay for only the easement itself and refuses to acknowledge that the presence of the power line could have an effect on the overall value of the property. In part, that…
The United States Energy Information Administration (EIA) recently issued a report that in September 2019 the United States exported more crude oil and petroleum products than it imported. This is the first month in the history of recorded data (since 1949) that exports have exceeded imports. Specifically, 8.76 million barrels…
On December 5, 2019 the Texas Supreme Court is hearing the case of Southwestern Electric Power Co. v. Kenneth Lynch et al., 581 S.W.3d 292, (Tex.Civ.App.- Texarkana, 2018 error granted), which involves the challenge by several Texas landowners in Bowie County to Southwestern Electric Power’s (“SWEPCO”) claim that it can…