In Exxon Mobil Corp. v. United States of America, from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas, ExxonMobil learned the hard way that filing amended tax returns can be very costly....more
2/3/2021
/ Amended Tax Returns ,
Corporate Counsel ,
Exxon Mobil ,
IRS ,
Malaysia ,
Mineral Leases ,
Oil & Gas ,
Partnerships ,
Qatar ,
Tax Fraud ,
Tax Liability ,
Tax Refunds ,
Tax Returns
In Endeavor Energy Resources, L.P. v. Energen Resources Corp. et al. the Supreme Court of Texas construed a continuous development clause in an oil and gas lease covering 11,300 acres in Howard County. After the primary term,...more
Enterprise Products Operating v. Trafigura, A G. asks, Who should pay when a “black blob” that had “the stench of a skunk” was left behind after $27 million worth of an odorless product is delivered from a ship?...more
12/22/2020
/ Ambiguous ,
Article III ,
Contamination ,
Contract Terms ,
Environmental Violations ,
Insurance Claims ,
Mineral Leases ,
Oil & Gas ,
Parol Evidence ,
Standing ,
Terms and Conditions
BlueStone Nat. Res. II, LLC v. Nettye Engler Energy, LP is another Texas case deciding whether language creating a nonparticipating royalty interest prohibited deduction of post-production costs. (Spoiler alert: it didn’t....more
In Mayo Found. For Med. Educ. & Research v. BP Am. Prod. Co. a United States District Court considered the circumstances under which a lessor can withhold its consent to assign an oil and gas lease....more
10/20/2020
/ Consent to Assignment ,
Contract Interpretation ,
Contract Terms ,
Lessor ,
Mineral Extraction ,
Mineral Leases ,
Mineral Rights ,
Oil & Gas ,
Operating Agreements ,
Preliminary Injunctions ,
Reasonableness Factors
The threat: You, the operator, are operating unprofitable wells where monthly costs exceed or barely equal revenues, making money on the fixed COPAS overhead charges. Your non-operators are going into the economic hole and...more
With the plunge in commodity prices many formerly profitable wells are now in the red, and we don’t know for how long. This is causing non-operators to question the bona fides of the operations … and of the operator, and to...more
San Miguel Electric Coop is a Texas nonprofit electric cooperative that owns and operates a power plant that supplies electricity to 38 Texas counties. After a four-week absence, they return to these pages, this time in DCP...more
Devon Energy Prod. Co., et al. v. Sheppard, et al is your kind of case if you are in search of:
- A roadmap for slicing and dicing royalty calculations in myriad ways,
- Pretty good summaries of the Supreme Court’s...more
In Wheeler et al v. San Miguel Electric Cooperative, we learn – again – the difficulty in asserting a position in litigation that is contrary to the actual words in the agreement you are fighting over....more
In Evans Resources, L.P., et al. v. Diamondback E&P, LLC, two agreements left the terms “constructed” and “utilized” undefined. If the terms had been defined would the outcome have been different? Maybe. Should parties define...more
7/21/2020
/ Breach of Contract ,
Condition Precedent ,
Contract Disputes ,
Contract Terms ,
Damages ,
Failure To Pay ,
Horizontal Wells ,
Judicial Foreclosure Process ,
Mineral Leases ,
Oil & Gas ,
Oil Wells ,
Surface Owner
The Texas Supreme Court has agreed to hear oral arguments in a dispute over an “accumulation” provision in a continuous development clause of an oil and gas lease. The case is Endeavor Energy Resources L.P. v. Energen...more
From Great Western. Drilling, Ltd. v. Pathfinder Oil & Gas, Inc. we learn that if you want one agreement to be conditioned on execution of another one, you’d better say so … in writing … in the first one....more
Geary v. Two Bow Ranch Limited Partnership* is an example of the havoc an unusual contract provision can create....more
The question in Cannisnia Plantation, LLC v. Cecil Blount Farms, LLC was whether a well was drilled in good faith in order to interrupt the running of prescription on a Louisiana mineral servitude....more
Samson Expl., LLC et al v. Moak considered the duties owed by a unit operator to an unleased mineral interest owner in tracts within the unit but on which no well is drilled or completed....more
Contract construction cases are fact-specific, but one can take lessons of general application from all of them. Here are the takeaways from Jones Energy, Inc. v. Pima Oil & Gas, L.L.C....more
WTX Fund, LLC v. Brown, is Texas mineral deed construction case.
In the same year that crazy thing happened at Coogan’s Bluff, the Roaches executed a Mineral Conveyance to the Holts. Let’s review the transaction and ask...more
Here we continue our discussion of the Texas Supreme Court’s opinion in Piranha Partners et al. v. Joe B. Neuhoff et al. determining that an assignment of an overriding royalty in minerals unambiguously conveyed the override...more
The question for the Texas Supreme Court in Piranha Partners et al. v. Joe B. Neuhoff et al. was whether an assignment of an overriding royalty in minerals conveyed the override only in production from the identified well...more
Generally, if your will leaves your beloved “all … right, title and interest in and to”, said beloved would receive the entirety of your interest, whether a surface estate, mineral estate, or both. But in ConocoPhillips, et...more
2/26/2020
/ Appeals ,
Beneficiaries ,
ConocoPhillips ,
Estate Claims ,
Inheritance ,
Jointly-Owned Property ,
Land Parcels ,
Land Titles ,
Life Estates ,
Mineral Leases ,
Mineral Rights ,
Oil & Gas ,
Popular ,
Property Division ,
Real Party in Interest ,
Reversal ,
Surface Owner ,
Wills
Yet another entry in the Strip and Gore universe (2012’s “Beware of Strips and Gores”, and 2019’s “Strip and Gore 2: The Sequel”) comes to us from Fort Worth Court of Appeals: Richard D. Crawford v. XTO Energy, Inc....more
1/21/2020
/ Appeals ,
Energy Exploration ,
Grantors ,
Ingress/Egress ,
Land Titles ,
Mineral Leases ,
Mineral Rights ,
Oil & Gas ,
Real Estate Market ,
Transfer of Rights ,
Well Drilling
Our sympathies go out to those in the oilfield services industry in Texas—it looks like you got a lump of coal. In Mesa Southern CWS Acquisition v. Deep Energy Exploration Partners the Houston Court of Appeals upended the...more
12/31/2019
/ Contract Terms ,
Liens ,
Master Service Agreement ,
Mineral Exploration ,
Mineral Leases ,
Minerals ,
Oil & Gas ,
Public Policy ,
Void and Unenforceable ,
Waiver of Rights ,
Waivers ,
Well Drilling
Suing a state and its public officials is difficult because of the doctrine of sovereign immunity. There are exceptions. State of Texas v. Signal Drilling, et al. presents several of them....more
In Texan Land & Cattle II, Ltd. v. ExxonMobil Pipeline Company a Texas court of appeals ruled that “oil or gas” is not limited to “crude petroleum,” but includes refined petroleum products gasoline and diesel....more