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A case is winding its way through the courts could be especially important in light of the large number of new oil and gas pipelines being constructed in Texas today. The case was heard by theTexas Court of Appeals in Tyler last year and is currently being heard by the Texas Supreme Court.

The case, Enbridge Pipelines (East Texas) LP v. Gilbert Wheeler, Inc., concerns landowners seeking property damages for the pipeline company’s violation of a pipeline right of way easement agreement. There are two main issues. The first issue is whether the cost to restore the property is the proper measure of damages for the breach of contract alleged by the landowners. The second issue is whether the Court of Appeals erred by holding that the landowners waived their claims by failing to submit a jury question on the nature of the property injury.

Factual Background

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The Texas Court of Appeals in Beaumont, Texas recently decided a very interesting the case that has huge implications for Texas land and mineral owners: Environmental Processing Systems LC v. FPL Farming Ltd. The Texas Supreme Court recently heard oral argument on this case.

The Facts

As many Texas mineral owners are aware, salt water is often produced by an oil well in conjunction with the oil. Generally, this salt water is required by law to be collected and taken to saltwater injection wells that are licensed by the Texas Railroad Commission. The salt water is then injected back into the subsurface, where it came from. But one cannot always control where the saltwater goes after it is injected.

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A new partnership has been formed in the energy industry that may benefit shale oil and gas drilling in Texas: the American Shale and Manufacturing Partnership. The member organizations include manufacturing, labor, environmental, academic, and business organizations. It was launched November 19, 2014 at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. The goal of the new group is a renaissance in American manufacturing, and to remind policymakers that hindering the development of shale oil and gas could hamper an already fragile economic recover in the United States.

Charles T. Drevna, president of the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, a member of the new partnership, said: “The dream of bringing manufacturing back to the United States is very real, but it requires our government developing policies that encourage growth instead of putting regulatory barriers in the way.” Matthew Sanfilippo, senior executive director of research initiatives at Carnegie Mellon University’s College of Engineering, noted that new technologies and domestic energy options like shale gas can transform American manufacturing.

Shale gas has created 2.1 million American jobs already, and it is expected to create another 1.25 million in the next ten years. Tax revenue from the industry is also expected to total $2.5 trillion by 2035 according to the US Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for 21st Century Energy. These statistics demonstrate why shale gas is so critical for manufacturing, especially due to job creation. “It is critical that the opportunities created by gas are compounded to deliver a reconstruction of our manufacturing base that will produce good community-building jobs, reduce trade deficits, and enhance our nation’s competitiveness and security,” said Walter Wise from the International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental and Reinforcing Iron Workers.

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Over the past few months there have been letters going back and forth between the National Park Service Director Jonathan B. Jarvis and Representative Rob Bishop, the Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Public Lands and Environmental Regulation.

On September 6, 2013, Representative Bishop sent Director Jarvis a letter (that you can view here) in which he questioned comments made by the National Park Service to the Bureau of Land Management about well stimulation and hydraulic fracturing on Federal and Indian lands. In his letter, Representative Bishop questioned the scientific integrity of the sources and data upon which the comments of Director Jarvis were based. As authority for his comments, the Park Service Director used a New York Times opinion piece written by Anthony Ingraffea. Mr. Ingraffea wrote that shale gas is a gangplank to global warming because of alleged methane leaks. The section of the Park Service’s comments quoting Mr. Ingraffea stated that methane leakage rates were 2.3% to 17% of annual gas production and claimed to get these numbers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Representative Bishop’s letter questioned why the Park Service was relying on a reporter’s opinion as a source of data and requested a determination of the information’s accuracy.

On November 12, 2013, Director Jarvis wrote a letter in response (that you can read here) to these questions. Jarvis admitted including a quote from a New York Times Op-Ed was inappropriate and sources should have been peer-reviewed scientific studies. He wrote that the Park Service does not rely on opinion pieces in newspapers as a basis for decision making. He also admitted the comments the Park Service made to to BLM were not adequately reviewed before they were delivered. He said that no one from management looked at these comments and he claims they were erroneously uploaded onto regulations.gov, contrary to established protocol. Because of these issues, Director Jarvis withdrew the National Park Service comments.

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The Houston Court of Appeals in Texas recently addressed the issue of surface owners rights in the case of Key Operating & Equipment Inc. v. Will and Loree Hegar. The case involves the use of the surface of the Plaintiffs’ land by an oil and gas operator. In Texas, the owner of the minerals generally has an implied easement for reasonable use of the surface in order to explore, develop and extract the minerals. In this case, the mineral owner wanted to make continued use of a road on the Plaintiffs’ surface estate to access minerals on other tracts, after that surface estate had been severed from its minerals, and after the minerals under the Plaintiffs” tract and the minerals under the other tracts had been pooled.

The Defendant, Key Operating and Equipment owned mineral rights and operated wells on two tracts of land (the Richardson and Rosenbaum-Curbo tracts) in Washington County, Texas since the late 1980’s. The mineral leases allowed for pooling, and in 2002, Key pooled mineral interests in the two tracts, and used the road across the Curbo tract to access their two producing wells on the Richardson tract. At the time of the suit, there was no longer a producing well on the Curbo tract. In 2002, the Hegars bought the surface of the Curbo tract and a 1/4 interest in the minerals. They knew about the lease and the road–which they used themselves to get to their house. They objected, however, when Key drilled a new well on the Richardson tract and used the road more frequently. Mr. Hegar stated, “We’re trying to raise a family and we can’t do it with a highway going through our property.” So in 2007, they sued Key for trespass and asked for a permanent injunction to prohibit Key from using the road. The Hegars claimed that no oil is actually being produced from the Curbo tract and Key only pooled the interests in order to continue to use the access road. Key claimed that the Curbo oil is migrating towards the Richardson tract, and that is why they pooled the two tracts.

The trial court agreed with the Hegars and permanently enjoined Key from using the road “for any purpose relating to the extraction, development, production, storage, transportation, or treatment of minerals produced from an adjoining” tract.

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Texas tops the list of most attractive jurisdictions for petroleum exploration and production investment, while Oklahoma leads the world with the most desirable policy environment, according to the annual Global Petroleum Survey compiled by the Fraser Institute.

The survey attempts to provide information about perceptions affecting investment decisions, including those on tax rates, regulatory obligations, uncertainty over environmental and other administrative regulations, as well as concerns regarding political stability and the security of personnel and equipment. These perceptions were assessed via a survey evaluating 157 jurisdictions, and compiled into the Fraser Institute’s Policy Perception Index.

panhandle.jpg In order, the jurisdictions perceived as having the policy environment most favorable to petroleum exploration and production investment are Oklahoma, Mississippi, Saskatchewan, Texas, Arkansas, Kansas, Alabama, North Dakota, Manitoba, and the Netherlands/North Sea. The jurisdictions perceived as the worst for petroleum exploration and production investment are Russia (except Offshore Arctic, Offshore Sakhalin, and Eastern Siberia), Iraq, South Sudan, Russia/Eastern Siberia, Uzbekistan, Russia/Offshore Arctic, Bolivia, Iran, Ecuador, and Venezuela.

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Faced with a rising tide of sweeping municipal legislation banning hydrocarbon extraction, mineral owners and oil and gas operators are taking the fight to court. The Independent Petroleum Association of New Mexico, along with an individual landowner and two limited liability corporations, are suing Mora County, New Mexico, alleging that the ordinance passed by the county violates the Plaintiff’s constitutional rights and exceeds the authority of the county council.

The Mora County ordinance, the first of its kind in the United States, is described by the county as a measure to protect the local water sources and the communities that rely on them. However, the ordinance specifically targets oil and natural gas extraction. The suit alleges that the real purpose of the ordinance, rather than protection of natural water sources, is to prevent lawful development of oil and natural gas resources within Mora County. The ordinance prohibits the extraction of water for use in the extraction of subsurface oil or gas, and also prohibits importing water into the county for that purpose. The ordinance further provides that no permits, licenses, privileges or charter issued by any state or federal agencies that violate the ordinance will be valid. The ordinance passed by Mora County is a variation on an ordinance developed by Pennsylvania attorney Thomas Linzey and adoption of similar ordinances is being considered by dozens of communities across the country.

The Independent Petroleum Association argues that the ordinance violates the substantive due process rights of the organization’s members and exceeds the authority of the county council. They further argue that the ordinance violates fundamental property rights, and that the ordinance does not meet the strict scrutiny standard because the ban is not narrowly tailored to serve a compelling governmental interest. In particular, they note that even though the stated purpose of the ban is to protect the water supply, the ban applies only to hydrocarbon extraction while ignoring the agricultural industry, a source of significant water pollution.

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Late last year a pipeline explosion occurred in a west Texas liquified petroleum pipeline, near the small town of Milford in Ellis County, about 50 miles south of Dallas. Emergency officials had to evacuate some residents and students at a nearby school. The Texas Department of Transportation had to close U.S. Highway 77 and FM 308 near the fire site. The Environmental Protection Agency also sent a crew from their Dallas office.

The accident happened when a rig drilling crew accidentally punctured a 10 inch liquefied petroleum pipeline owned by Chevron in partnership with Atlas Pipeline Partners LP. The rupture created a large fire, which was allowed to burn out after about 24 hours. Employees on the rig were able to escape to safety.

The explosion occurred in part of a 2,700 mile West Texas LPG Pipeline, which extends from natural gas processing plants in west Texas and New Mexico to storage facilities in Mont Belvieu, Texas. There was a prior incident in September 2011, when a fire was ignited by a production pump, according to the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. That incident caused more than $1.5 million in property damage and released more than 13,000 bbl in liquified petroleum. Readers may also recall the recent pipeline accident in Mayflower, Arkansas, when an ExxonMobil pipeline ruptured. PHMSA recently found that Exxon had violated nine pipeline safety regulations and was fined $2.6 million in civil penalties. The largest portion of the fine was due to ExxonMobil not following its own operations and maintenance procedures! ExxonMobil issued a statement saying it was disappointed a Notice of Probable Violations was issued but that it was working with PHMSA on investigating the rupture. My guess is that “disappointment” doesn’t begin to cover the feelings of the nearby residents whose homes and businesses were impacted by this rupture.

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An interesting case involving a Texas oil and gas lease was decided recently by the Texas Court of Appeals in El Paso. The case was Community Bank of Raymore v. Chesapeake Exploration LLC and Anadarko Petroleum Corporation. The issue was whether the lessee’s right to extract minerals found deeper than the stratum or level below the deepest producing well in a particular unit terminated when the lease’s primary term expired.

The oil and gas lease in question covered 16,000 acres, split into four blocks, located in Loving County, Texas. In Block 2 of the leased area, Chesapeake Exploration drilled 13 wells, the deepest of which was at 5,672 feet when the primary term of the lease expired on January 26, 2010. Community Bank of Raymore (“CBR”) requested that Chesapeake release its mineral rights below the depth of the deepest well, but Chesapeake refused. CBR file suit for breach of the lease.

CBR argued that the Pugh clause applied, which terminates an oil and gas lease at the end of the primary term as to any portion of the leased land which is not being produced. Chesapeake disagreed, relying on the continuous development clause, saying the Pugh clause was thus never triggered because Chesapeake developed Block 2 and paid royalties from existing wells in that block. Chesapeake said that its continued development of Block 2 was “sufficient to maintain the undeveloped, deep-lying formations beyond the primary term and satisfy the lease’s continuous development requirement.”

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In Texas, a properly drafted oil and gas lease will prohibit the use of the landowner’s surface or ground water. The well driller or operater must bring in water from another source for fracing. Hydraulic fracturing, or fracing, of wells requires substantial amounts of water. About 20% of that water is recovered, but the recovered water often contains various chemicals (generally nontoxic) and other debris. Fracing water used to be considered waste and was put into injection wells deep underground. More recently, the oil and gas industry has come up with another solution that may benefit everyone: water recycling.

In a lot of areas, there have been droughts or there is a shortage of freshwater–including in Texas, where fracing accounts for 50% of water use in select locations. For this reason, interest in recycling the water used in fracing has been growing in the last few years. It is now seen as an economical, and more sustainable, option for the oil and gas industry. Halliburton, ExxonMobil, and XTO conducted a study on recycling recently and presented a paper showing savings of between $70,000 and $100,000 per well, with no loss of production. Walter Dale of Halliburton said: “It is a paradigm shift.”

There are different methods of recycling fracing water, but the goal is to reuse most of the water used in fracing instead of sending it away as waste. Water Rescue Services has a process that separates the water from the chemicals and other waste, taking the 5% that is waste to a dump but reusing 95% of the water. Pure Stream recycles water for use in an oil patch using a more expensive system that cleans water sufficiently that it can be returned to lakes or rivers or used for agriculture. In Texas, Fasken Oil and Ranch is attempting to use no freshwater at all in its fracing operations. By recycling water and using briny water from an aquifer, the company hopes to achieve this within six months.

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