In a recent entry on the blog Exxon Perspectives, the huge producer presents a number of reasons why relying on compressed natural gas as a transportation fuel might be misplaced, at least for the near future. Among the obstacles:

  • Vehicle costs are high
  • Infrastructure is nonexistent and costs will be high
  •  CNG has lower energy density than gasoline and therefore less efficient

ExxonMobil’s answer:

  • Wait for LNG to develop. It is a better vehicle fuel
  • Let the market, not the government, decide
  • Use CNG to fuel fleets, but not your car or mine

To get a fuller perspective, read the comments posted after the entry, where the Exxon viewpoint is either “so biased it’s pathetic”, “misleading”, or worse. The commentors argue with Exxon, then they argue with each other.  Dislike for “Big Oil” is palpable. 

Pro-CNG web sites www.cngchat.com and www.cngnow.com are mentioned.  The latter appears to be sponsored by natural gas producers.  Query: Why would ExxonMobil (the biggest natural gas producer in the continental US?) be against CNG vehicles if there weren’t good economic reasons to be against it?  Maybe theyare right. 

In encourging news for natural gas producers, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved construction of Cheniere Energy Inc.’s $4.5 Billion LNG export facility at its existing import terminal in Hackberry, Cameron Parish, Louisiana.   Also, Sempra Energy, Inc. will invest $6 Billion in an LNG export facility at Lake Charles.  Sempra has an import terminal at the same location.  Quite a turnaround in the natural gas markets, and boon for employment in southwestern Louisiana.

And there is even more to look forward to regarding federal regulation of domestic oil and gas exploration:

 

So said the lessor-plaintiffs in Walker v. Chesapeake Louisiana, L.P. The lessee-defendant, the trial court, and the court of appeals said “Yes, but . . .”. The lessors accused the lessee of breaching six leases and sought cancellation. The court invoked the doctrine of “judicial control” that allows a court to avoid cancellation when equity requires it.

The “Gotcha” Lease

The leases had three provisions that the lessee allegedly breached:

  • There would be no surface operations without the lessor’s consent (Operations were minimal and there was no damage to the land);
  • Subject to a mutually agreed data license agreement, the lessee was required to furnish lessor certain information regarding wells on the premises (The agreement hadn’t been negotiated, and the lessee contacted the lessor the day after receiving a demand for cancellation);
  • If a seismic permit was obtained within one mile of the premises, the lessee must negotiate in good faith to include the premises and surrounding acreage in the seismic coverage (The court construed this clause in lessee’s favor, so there was no breach).

The Court’s View

La.  Civil Code Art. 2013 allows judicial dissolution of a contract when the obligor fails to perform.  There are several ways for a court to let a breaching lessee off the hook in the face of a claim for lease cancellation. Louisiana, like virtually all states, frowns upon forfeiture of a contract. This is especially true, said the court, where the breach is not substantial and there is no injury to the lessor. Such was the case here.

The court also pointed to a Louisiana case that discussed the “good faith” of the breaching party, holding that the court would deny cancellation if the breach was of minor importance and was caused by no fault of the obligor or is based on a good faith mistake of fact.

Takeaways

This case has several lessons for all of us.

  • Lessor: You have the right to enforce each unreasonable provision in your lease, or enforce each reasonable provision in an unreasonble way. But don’t expect every court to be enthusiastic about helping you. Listen to this advice:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kn481KcjvMo 
  • Lessee: Resist unreasonable lease terms when you can.  You might survive a fight over arbitrary or unreasonable lease terms, but it will be troublesome and expensive. You don’t want to have to rely on equity (a/k/a, the court’s mercy) to avoid a bad result.
  • Landman: When your geologist says that without that certain tract her favorite prospect will be worthless and the company’s future doomed, warn her how painful it will be when the lessor insists on enforcing the “gotcha” lease that you will have to live with. And don’t fall for aw-shucks platitudes from the lessor: “Gosh, I wouldn’t ever enforce any of this stuff. I don’t even understand it, but my lawyer says I need it to keep people like you honest”.
  • Out-of-state lessee who has been sued on the lessor’s home turf: Think about getting to the federal courthouse. See my March 27, 2012, post to see what can happen if you don’t.

The Back Story?

Just as history is written by the victors, opinions are written by the judges who see facts and equities in a certain way. Rare is the losing party who agrees. Any analysis of a decision is based on what you see in the opinion, which is usually a lot less than everything that happened.

With that caveat, let’s speculate. One can see what motivations might have been in play here. The leases were signed in 2008 for land in Caddo Parish. Looks like a good Haynesville well was drilled when gas prices were far higher than the anemic sub-$2.00 now being paid. The lessors refused to negotiate with the lessee over the breaches, and the suit swung for the fences: nothing less that cancellation of all six leases. The result would be a windfall – ownership of a nice well after the lessee risked millions of dollars to buy the leases and drill the wells.

In my never-ending effort to improve my position in life by associating with people who are smarter and more knowledgable than I am (my wife being a notable example), this entry is by noted environmental lawyer Cynthia Bishop (cbishop@cbishoplaw.com) on a topic that is important to anyone in the energy business.

Cindy Bishop

If your E&P or service company is growing quickly, you could be overlooking environmental regulations that are triggered by the very growth and success your hard work has achieved. Fortunately, the EPA and many states, including Texas and Oklahoma, have voluntary disclosure or internal audit programs that can waive or greatly reduce penalties.

Most environmental regulations apply to operations with a capacity (such as throughput or equipment size) above a certain threshold. As a result, many startup companies are exempt at the outset of their operations, but later fall under permitting or reporting requirements as they expand. Examples are spill prevention plans, air permits, and annual EPA Form “R” reports. These companies are so focused on meeting the increased demand that they sometimes do not think about environmental compliance.

The disclosure programs allow a company to audit itself and then disclose and correct any violations identified during the audit. In return for the self-disclosure and corrective action, the agency will waive or greatly reduce typical penalties. Each audit program contains specific requirements that must be met in order to qualify for the penalty waiver, so be sure to check with applicable guidlines and regulations.

See the EPA’s Audit Policy

See the TCEQ Audit Privilege Act

The Oklahoma law can be found at OAC 252:4-9-5(a).

Invoking the spirit of Emily Litella, the Environmental Protection Agency offered a govenmental “never mind” when it withdrew its emergency order that attempted to hold Range Resources responsible for contamination of drinking water on Parker County, Texas, well sites under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act.

 Those who have followed this case know that several investigations into the EPA’s assertions showed no link between Range’s operations and water contamination. For example, a Texas Railroad Commission investigation more than a year ago concluded that Range did not contaminate the water wells.

This retreat should have happened a long time (say, about $4.2 million in Range legal fees) ago, but be assured this action is no indication that the EPA intends to abandon its efforts to regulate fracking.  Nor, one could suspect, does it signal the end of the EPA’s resolve to challenge oil and gas production. So much for “science-based regulation”.

For contrasting viewpoints on the subject, see the Wall Street Journal article, and especially the 127 (at last count) comments, and a Texas blogger with a decidedly different – one could say hysterical – sentiments about this case and fracking in general.

Remember the Wilford Brimley character in The Firm? “I get paid to be suspicious when I’ve got nothing to be suspicious about.” Shell Oil Company v. Ross commands you to think like Mr. Brimley. If you suspect your lessee is not paying proper royalties, do not wait to investigate. Even if you don’t suspect anything is amiss, investigate anyway or you will lose your right to sue. The Texas Supreme Court has reaffirmed the heavy burden imposed on a royalty owner to discover he is being underpaid by his lessee.

The Suit

Mr. Ross didn’t take Mr. Brimley’s advice, perhaps because he wasn’t working for the Mob.  He was dealing with a major oil and gas producer. Mr. Ross owned royalty interests in wells operated by Shell. The lease royalty was 1/8th of the amount realized. The state had a 50% royalty interest and was paid independently of the plaintiffs. For some unexplained reason, Shell paid what the court referred to as an “arbitrary price”, and Shell’s the best explanation at trial was that it “made a mistake”.

Mr. Ross was a lawyer who did oil and gas work. The suit was for fraudulent concealment, accusing Shell of withholding sufficient information for him to determine that they were being paid less than they should have been.

The Rationale

The “discovery rule” can stop the running of limitations on a fraudulent concealment claim. The court reiterated the test for the rule to apply in Texas litigation: The injury must be “inherently undiscoverable and objectively verifiable.” The test is administered on a “categorical basis”. There are no exceptions!

The court identified several sources of “readily accessible and publically available information” that could have lead the royalty owner, if he had used “reasonable diligence” to discover he had been underpaid.

Among those sources was the El Paso Permian Basin Index which, according to the court, would have revealed that the royalties being paid were too low. Another was the records of the Texas General Land Office, which did not reveal the price Shell paid to the state on the same land, but “would have revealed that Shell was underpaying” the Rosses. The opinion also suggests that Mr. Ross could have “ask[ed] the companies Shell sold the gas to the price they paid …”. The court did not handicap the likelihood of the success of such a request.

A Few Questions

• If Shell merely “made a mistake”, why didn’t the company go ahead and pay what it admitted it owed? (Granted, this one is more ethical than legal)

• Should the “inherently undiscoverable/objectively verifiable” test be tempered by, say, a requirement that the royalty owner have some reason to believe he is being underpaid in the first place? Must a royalty owner assume that everybody is out to underpay him? The court says “yes”. Constant vigilance is the standard. Generalized mistrust is the word of the day.  Think like Mr. Brimley, the Mob enforcer.

• How many royalty owners are sophisticated enough to look at sources like those mentioned by the court? I would say, not very many. How much success would a small royalty owner have when she asks the pipeline how much the large producer was paid on one lease? Not much, I would say.

A lessee, operator, and contract driller were found to be a “single business enterprise” for the purpose of imposing statutory penalties and attorney fees for failure to pay royalties.  The principle is that if one corporation is wholly under the control of another, the fact is it is a separate entity does not relieve the controlling entity from liability.  The law considers the former corporation to be merely an alter ego of the latter.

Louisiana law imposes statutory penalties on a lessee who fails to pay royalties. Oracle 1031 Exchange, LLC was the actual lessee and Oracle Oil LLC and Delphi Oil, Inc. were the operator and the contract driller.

What is required for one entity to be “wholly under the control” of another?  (1) Delphi and/or Oracle paid royalties from the well; (2) Delphi and/or Oracle received the checks for selling the oil produced from the well; (3) Delphi and/or Oracle paid the severance taxes; (4) all three entities are headed by the same person; and (5) Exchange appeared to be insolvent (by the fact that it appealed devolutively – without a bond or other means to suspend the effect of the judgment).  From all of this, the court concluded that Oracle and Delphi were wholly under the control of Exchange and were Exchange’s alter ego.

One possible reason the court passed liability for underpayment on to Exchange could be that but for the court’s treatment of Oracle and Delphi as, in effect, lessees, the royalty owners would have had no recourse for recovery of their unpaid royalties.

All states do not recognize this theory of recovery.  For example, efforts by plaintiffs in Texas to convince the Supreme Court to adopt this standard have been unsuccessful.

Oracle 1031 Exchange , LLC v. Bourque

With apologies to Click and Clack, from time to time I will post “puzzlers”, questions about title and similar issues that have no apparent answer.  Here is the first one: 

Joe Bob Joiner owns a non-participating royalty interest under a tract.  The amount of interest he owns is tied to the amount of royalty stated in any lease affecting the tract. (i.e. he retains “½ x 3/16 lessor’s royalty”).  Daisy Bradford, the owner of 100% of the minerals on the tract, believes it is her destiny to be the H. L. Hunt of the 21st century and decides to go into the oil business by developing the minerals herself.  Therefore there is no oil and gas lease on the tract.  She drills a well and, lo and behold,  it is a producer!  What interest does Joe Bob the NPRI owner have in production from the tract?

 

If you were wondering whether the debate over the safety and effectiveness of hydraulic fracturing has entered our national conciousness, check this out: 

 

In a serious approach to the issue, the opinion magazine National Review recently joined in the conversation in a piece by Kevin Williamson, The Truth About Fracking – What the Protestors Don’t Know.  The focus is on the Marcellus Shale, but his thesis applies everywhere there is horizontal drilling and fracking.  These days, that is a lot of places. 

Among his observations:

  •  The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection receives high marks for competence and its application of common sense in regulating the handling of frack water.
  • On the other hand is the fear that the EPA will adopt a top-down, one-size-fits-all aproach to fracking and frack-fluid regulation, ignoring the differences in geology and other factors in different producing areas.
  • The industry is addressing the troublesome aspects of fracking.  Frack water is being treated in innovative ways by companies like TerraAqua Resource Management. 
  • Producers like Fort Worth-based Range Resources are recognized for responsible environmental practices and efforts to minmize the impact of drilling on local communities.   
  • George Mitchell, and not your federal government, gets the credit for having the vision, conducting the research, and taking the enormous financial risks necessary to develop modern fracking techniques.
  • He reveals distortions of fact presented in Gasland, the documentary allleging that a Colorado farmer’s tap water caught fire because of fracking. In fact, tap water in that community has been catching fire since at least the 1930’s.
  • Natural gas development is responsible for thousands of new jobs in areas that need them, a fact that we Texans and our neighbors in Louisiana and Oklahoma have known for decades. 

 

 

In a vindication of landowners’ rights, the Texas Supreme Court prohibited a pipeline owner from using eminent domain to take private property.   In Texas Rice Land Partners, Ltd. v. Denbury Green Pipeline-Texas, LLC, the court said that a pipeline must show that it satisfies the requirements for common-carrier status before it will be allowed to use eminent domain.  (Note, this is a new opinion in the case, superceding the opinion delivered on August 26, 2011).

The court said that the Constitution’s protection of  private property rights requires more of a party seeking eminent domain power than ”checking the right boxes in one-page Railroad Commission form” through a process in which the landowners who will be affected have no participation.  The court rejected the proposition that all the pipeline had to prove was that the pipeline would be available for public use.  There must be a “reasonable probability” that the pipeline will at some point serve the public by transporting gas for one or more customers who will either retain ownership of their gas or sell it to parties other than the carrier.

This case highlights the difference between Texas and other producing states.  See, for example, a Louisiana case allowing the use of “expropriation” as they call it there, if there is “any allocation to a use resulting in advantages to the public at large”.

This case has implications in many situations.  One that comes to mind is the producer who uses a wholly-owned pipeline subsidiary to move production across the lessor’s property, calling it a common carrier and invoking the right of eminent domain to overcome surface use restrictions in the lease.

Maybe you’ve been there.  All signals are “go” for closing on your PSA.  Then the buyer chooses not to complete  the transaction.  What to do? A question your lawyer will think about when asked to enforce a purchase and sale agreement: Does it describe the property well enough to comply with the statute of frauds?  Preston Exploration v. Chesapeake Energy teaches several lessons on this subject:  First, in this case the need for title work before closing did not make the contract unenforceable.  Second, it isn’t always easy to know whether the statute has been complied with (The trial court held for the purchaser who backed out; the appellate court sided with the seller).  Third, related instruments can be read together to determine the intent of the parties.

The statute of frauds requires that a contract for the sale of real property be in writing.  The statute is satisfied when a writing furnishes, within itself or by reference to some other existing writing, the means or data by which the land to be conveyed may be identified with reasonable certainty.

The parties executed a PSA for a $110 million transaction.  The purchaser said it wouldn’t close, asserting that the exhibit describing the leases to be conveyed wasn’t final because title work had to be done.  The lower court said there was no meeting of the minds on what was to be conveyed.  The appellate court saw it another way: The question wasn’t about whether there was a meeting of the minds (a prerequisite to enforcement of any contract).The question  was whether the documents adequately described what was to be conveyed.  The court said they did.   The need for additional title examination meant only that some leases might not be conveyed, but the parties had agreed on the subject matter of the agreement.  The exhibit described the leases by recording information, which satisfied the statute of frauds.

For more than you want to know about the Texas statute of frauds, see a presentation I made on the topic. 2007-Statute of Frauds SBOT