If you are scoring at home, count Permico Royalties LLC v. Barron Properties, Ltd., as a win for “floating” in the fixed-or-floating royalty battles. Permico, successor to grantors in a 1937 Deed for a tract in Ward County,...more
Davenport v. EOG Resources, Inc. is an appeal of a temporary injunction. The title tells you the result.
Davenport owned four tracts comprising 5,000 acres in Webb County that were originally part of a larger tract...more
Rhetorical Question: When will Texas be done with fixed/floating royalty cases such as Johnson et al v. Clifton et al?
Rhetorical Answer: When scriveners of deeds that are open to eight conceivably plausible meanings...more
Producers disappointed by the Supreme Court’s holding in Devon Energy Production v. Sheppard might have reason to feel vindicated. The question in HL Hawkins Jr., Inc. v. Capitan Energy Inc. et al. was whether producer...more
In Smart v. 3039 RNC Holdings LLC, the court reminds us that it will harmonize all parts of a contract, even one that “is not a model of clarity”, to reach the correct result.
...more
The plain, ordinary, and generally accepted meaning of a word doesn’t mean “anything goes”. It depends on context, says the Supreme Court of Texas in Finley Resources Inc. v. Headington Royalty Inc., a dispute over the...more
Can a non-operating working interest in a Texas oil and gas lease be adversely possessed? The Amarillo Court of Appeals said yes in PBEX II, LLC v. Dorchester Minerals, L.P....more
Tips on litigation avoidance: Not making promises you don’t intend to keep is easy enough. Stating a fact or making a promise and things change, you could be a fraudster if you don’t come clean before closing....more
Freeeport-McMoRan Oil and Gas, LLC and Ovintiv USA Inc. v. 1776 Energy Partners LLC presented a recurring question faced by Texas oil and gas producers: When can proceeds of production be withheld by the operator without...more
6/2/2023
/ Contract Terms ,
Gas Royalties ,
Gross Proceeds ,
Mineral Extraction ,
Mineral Leases ,
Mineral Rights ,
Natural Resources ,
Oil & Gas ,
Safe Harbors ,
Texas ,
TX Supreme Court
And what a difference it was! In Apache Corp. v. Apollo Expl. LLC et al, Apache and others acquired an oil and gas lease on 100,000+ acres in the Texas Panhandle. The primary term was three years. The effective date was...more
Imagine these facts in a force majeure dispute (as presented in Point Energy Partners Permian LLC et al. v. MRC Permian Company).
Lessee (MRC) invokes the force majeure provision of an oil and gas lease, asserting that...more
5/10/2023
/ Civil Conspiracy ,
Constructive Trusts ,
Force Majeure Clause ,
Mineral Exploration ,
Mineral Extraction ,
Mineral Leases ,
Mineral Rights ,
Oil & Gas ,
Repudiation ,
Tortious Interference ,
Trespass ,
Well Drilling
In a recurring theme, harmony and the four-corners rule were front and center in Citation 2002 Inv. LLC et al v. Occidental Permian, Ltd. et al, a case of competing claims over the granting language in an assignment of oil...more
In Devon Energy Production Company, LP et al v. Sheppard et al, the Supreme Court of Texas construed what it referred to as a “bespoke” and “highly unique” royalty clause in several oil and gas leases to prohibit the...more
Texas courts continue to address the “fixed or floating” non-participating royalty interest question. The El Paso Court of Appeals’ answer in Bridges v. Uhl et al. was floating, based on the language in that particular...more
Ellison v. Three Rivers Acquisition LLC et al., on remand from the Texas Supreme Court, is the third round of a boundary dispute between mineral lessees in Irion County.
For the history of Ms. Ellison’s odyssey from...more
The negotiators and scriveners of the purchase and sale agreement in Matter of PetroQuest Energy, Incorporated would have been well served to have considered all the potential ramifications, however remote, flowing from the...more
Delay in filing suit too often spells doom for the plaintiff, as we learn in Zadeck Succession et al v. Treme et al.
Treme (as in the family collectively) claimed their father, Vandiver, was conveyed a 5% working...more
The question in Brooke-Willbanks v. Flatland Mineral Fund LP, et al was which party to a Texas mineral deed would bear the burden of two previously reserved nonparticipating royalty interests....more
The takeaway from Hahn v. ConocoPhillips Company is that in Texas a NPRI holder may not diminish his rights by ratifying pooling of an oil and gas lease unless there are provisions explicitly purporting to do so....more
The question in Kim R. Smith Logging Inc. v. Indigo Minerals LLC was whether a disgruntled Louisiana royalty owner sent its demand for unpaid royalties to the right party. It turns out that it did....more
Precious little legal analysis is required to grasp the lesson from Springbok Royalty Partners v. Cook. No mode or manner of legal gymnastics is likely to save parties from the legal effect of a contract they didn’t bother...more
Let’s begin with some Texas law on what a seller sells when he executes a deed:
Generally, a Texas real property deed will confer upon the grantee the greatest estate as the terms of the instrument will permit. This...more
Let’s proceed directly to the takeaways from Fort Apache Energy, Inc. v. Short OG III, Ltd., et al, a Southern District of Texas bankruptcy court opinion. (Gray Reed partners Jim Ormiston and David Leonard represented Short...more
The principal contention in the tax refund case of Exxon v. United States was whether certain mineral related transactions between Exxon and the countries of Qatar and Malaysia were sales or leases. Originally Exxon treated...more
11/9/2022
/ Corporate Taxes ,
Exxon Mobil ,
Gas Royalties ,
Income Taxes ,
IRS ,
Lease Tax ,
Malaysia ,
Mineral Leases ,
Oil & Gas ,
Profits ,
Qatar ,
Revenue ,
Sales Tax ,
Statements of Economic Interest ,
Tax Liability ,
Tax Refunds
The common thread throughout the myriad oil and gas royalty cases decided recently by Texas courts could be “harmony”, the reading of different, seemingly conflicting, contract provisions so as to give meaning to all....more