Short-payment of royalties – when do post-production costs cross the line into unreasonableness?
This next-to-last entry in Blawgletter's seven-part series on the hottest oil & gas claims for returns to the theme of royalty owners who receive less than they believe the lease entitles them to. Part 6 addresses what happens when the operator deducts
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
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"
Wilson Sporting Goods put the number of Jack L. Frolow's tennis racket patent on 14 models of its tennis rackets. It also paid Frolow royalties on 299 racket models. Yet the district court granted Wilson summary judgment on the theory that Frolow hadn't put forward any evidence that the rackets infringed his patent.
The Federal
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
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