In WMH Farms v. Apache Corporation the Third Circuit Court of Appeal reversed summary judgment in favor of plaintiff/landowner WMH against lessee JP Oil and dismissed JP’s third-party demand against Walter Oil and Gas.
Then the Louisiana Supreme Court reversed the court of appeal, reinstated the summary judgment, and remanded. We will report on the
Another dispute is resolved according to the provisions in a Master Service Agreement. Have you reviewed yours lately?
Jones was employed by Murphrey Oil Company. He died while working on a well operated by Texas Pacific Investment Company on a location in Winn Parish, Louisiana. Murphrey and TPIC had a MSA by which Murphrey was
In Zarvona Energy v. Black Stone Minerals Company, a Texas Court of Appeals reiterated that the cessation-of-production clause in an oil and gas lease cannot be read in absolute terms as a lessor might want it to be. The Court also grappled with ambiguities among four different provisions in the lease.
After reading Devon Energy Production Company, L.P. v. Oliver if you’ recall a similar post-production cost dispute, it was last week. And the result was the same. Royalties under this lease are to be calculated at the wellhead (where there are no PPC’s) and not on a downstream market price
You might know Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, for ’60’s political boss-segregationist Leander Perez. or maybe for its role in launching Huey Long’s political career after the New Orleans city fathers blew a hole in the levee in order to save the Queen City from the 1927 flood. (The Kingfish would go on to terrorize out-of-state
In Fasken Oil and Ranch, Ltd. v. Puig the Supreme Court of Texas resolved whether a deed conveying a non-participating royalty interest “free of costs forever” relieved the royalty owners from bearing postproduction costs for minerals sold downstream. Under the language in the deed in this case, it did not.
The
Way back in 2023 it was predicted that the Supreme Court of Texas’ decision in Van Dyke v. Navigator would spawn years of litigation. How right the predictions were!
Davis v. Aethon Energy Operating LLC is more for lawyers than business people but it is worth noting. A Texas court of appeals affirmed a take-nothing judgment against lessors who sued over the lessee’s failure to provide required information on check stubs. The question asked of the jury did not match the
Robert May et al v. Ineos USA Oil & Gas, LLC et al, could, if you are so inclined, serve as a tutorial on terms used in oil and gas transactions or, if you are further along than that, it could be your guide for negotiating and drafting farmouts.
The agreements between the plaintiffs/farmors
“Gambit”: A calculated move, a stratagem. An example might be to buy a mineral interest with a long and complicated title history from the incarcerated son of a deceased parent and to bet on a court favoring your characterization of the property. In Griffin Energy Law, PLLC v. Billingsley et al. the gambit failed.
The