At Looper Reed we advise our clients that it is good business to accommodate your neighbor informally, if you can. Sometimes that leads to attempted world domination, as Chamberlain learned from Hitler in 1938. Closer to home it is my college-age son using his bedroom floor as a summertime closet. It can also lead to
Lessor is Not Entitled to Royalty on Hedging Profits
A Louisiana lessee does not owe its lessor royalties based on hedging profits, said a federal district court in Cimarex Energy Co. v. Chastant. Cimarex, the lessee, hedged its gas contracts and didn’t pay its lessor, Chastant, earnings from the hedge.
As the court described it, hedging involves buying and selling financial positions as
Judicial Ascertainment Clause Trumps Automatic Termination of a Louisiana Lease
Other than say, $8.00 crude, the recent national election, or a top-five recruiting class by your most-reviled gridiron enemies, few events are as likely to work an operator into a worst-case-scenario frenzy as a lease termination claim. Lessors love ‘em, of course!
The question of the day:
In a head-to-head contest between a Louisiana statute
Mineral Lessors Introduced to Commercial Paper
By Jonathan Nowlin
The difference between a “draft” and a “check” is explained in Jackson v. Pride Oil & Gas Properties, Inc., a Louisiana case. To the lessor,they might look and feel the same, but in reality they aren’t. “Draft” is a general term for an instrument that directs one person or entity to
Executive Right Owner Could Be Liable for Failing to Forward Royalty Payments
The ghosts of Clinton Manges and people like him continue to haunt executive right owners in Texas. In the 1980’s, Mr. Manges’ abuse of his non-participating royalty owner inspired the Texas Supreme Court to re-affirm the obligations of an executive right owner to the NPRI owner: “utmost fair dealing” and a fiduciary duty.
In Friddle
Royalty Clause Paying Annual Rent Does Not Survive Non-production
“How long will you torment me and crush me with words?” Job 19:3.
Much like the long-suffering Job, the defendants in Heasley v. KSM Energy, Inc. et al, did not like the words they were hearing. In this case, the words were their own, in the sense that the words were in the oil
Exxon and the Miesches – Round Three
“Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns —
“We’ll Fill in the Blanks Later” Does Not Make a Contract
Contract law 101: To have a binding contract there must be an offer and an acceptance. And so it is in oil and gas leasing in Louisiana. Thus, in Ballard v. XTO there was no binding agreement to take a lease.
A landowner representing an unknown number of potential lessors
The Conspiracy That Never Was
Sponsoring the most paranoid Texas conspiracy theory since the puff of smoke from the grassy knoll, groups of neighborhood associations, homeowners, and businesses sued virtually all of the major Barnett Shale producers over their failure to complete negotiations for oil and gas leases for bonuses of up to $20,000 per acre. Cessation of negotiations –
“Paying Quantities” Revisited After 113 Years
Surely, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has been busy since century before last, but apparently not on a lot of oil and gas cases. The court revisited the standard, first established in 1899, for determining whether an oil and gas lease has produced in paying quantities. In T.W. Phillips Gas & Oil Co. v. Jedlicka,