Oil and gas and the Empire State
Does a state's years-long ban on the fracking of oil and gas wells extend the "primary" term of a lease until the ban ends, allowing the frackers who couldn't frack more time to come back and frack?
This week, the highest court of an important commercial state that
The collapse in oil prices since June 2014, and the significant drop in those for natural gas, have put tremendous pressures on relationships in the industry. The stresses — between operators and non-operators, lessees and royalty owners, principals and contractors, investors and investees, among others — make legal disputes both more likely and harder to
A group of oil and gas lessors/royalty owners — who won more than $21 million on fraud and breach of lease claims at trial but lost in the court of appeals — prevailed today in the Supreme Court of Texas.
A rarity for the producer-leaning Court, the 9-0 decision in Hooks v. Samson Lone Star,
Big victory for big oil . . . and big gas
The Fifth Circuit handed a large win today to oil and gas lessees in the Lone Star State.
The dispute that the court addressed concerned computation of royalties, which an oil and gas producer pays to landowners and others in return for the right
Oil and gas cases seem to supply more than their share of fights about the meaning of contract terms. Why? We suspect it has something to do with money.
Take Total E&P USA, Inc. v. Kerr-McGee Oil & Gas Corp., No. 11-30038 (5th Cir. Mar. 12, 2013). In that case, two of three lessees
The Fifth Circuit ruled last week that the terms of an oil and gas lease could give a real estate firm the right to damages for drilling operations that hurt the firm's efforts to build and sell homes in a Shreveport subdivision. Greenwood 950, L.L.C. v. Chesapeake Louisiana, L.P., No. 11-30436 (5th Cir. June 12
Big Oil v. Royalty Owners
Who said Big Oil can't beat Texas royalty owners?
Not Blawgletter. And definitely not the Supreme Court of the Lone Star State.
Royalty owners typically become that by granting your ExxonMobils, your Conocos, your BPs, and the like the right to drill for oil and gas. The lease contract calls