Because my practice focuses on complex commercial disputes–especially cases involving antitrust, oil and gas, and patents–I keep daily track of important decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court and the 13 U.S. Courts of Appeals.
You can follow along during the week on Twitter (@contingencyblog) or here at The Contingency each Monday with this Commercial Case Roundup: U.S. Appeals.
Continue Reading Commercial Case Roundup: U.S. Appeals
Surface damage – what must operators do to accommodate existing uses of the surface estate?
Today we conclude Blawgletter's seven-part series on the Hottest Oil & Gas Claims for 2015, a paper we co-wrote for the 66th Oil & Gas Law Conference in Houston. This last piece deals with maybe the hardest claim to make
Blawgletter offers the fourth installment in the seven-part series on the Hottest Oil & Gas Claims for 2015. This time, we address whether flaring gas qualifies as "use" on which the operator must pay royalties.
Legal backdrop
Royalty clauses typically require payment of royalty for oil and gas “produced from the Leased Premises and sold or
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
Short-payment of royalties
Today we come to number three in Blawgletter's seven-part series on The Hottest Oil & Gas Claims for 2015, a paper that we presented at the 66th Annual Oil & Gas Conference in Houston. The third topic describes an area of legal uncertainty around a common oil and gas term — "well"
Breach of covenant to administer lease — must the operator use the latest drilling and completion technology?
Today Blawgletter continues our seven-part series from the 66th Annual Oil & Gas Law Conference in Houston with part 2. We turn now to an issue that had more resonance when high prices dominated and made a call
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,
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
Chevron and the Republic of Ecuador have beaten and bloodied each other for two decades now in what seems like just about every U.S. and Ecuadoran court that exists. The fight relates to claims in arbitration that Chevron predecessor Texaco polluted oil fields in Ecuador. Background here. And it has so far resulted in