Co-author Rees LeMay* “Ratification is not a game of ‘gotcha’”, said the Texas Supreme Court in BPX Operating Co. v. Strickhausen.  The Court, in a 5-4 opinion, addressed the standard for an oil and gas lessor’s implied ratification of an unauthorized pooling. Among other lessons, this decision warns royalty owners to be careful when cashing those royalty checks.…

Co-author Rusty Tucker In Apache Corp. v. Hill, et al.,  lessors prevailed in a lease construction dispute because of the court’s unsurprising conclusion that a typewritten addendum to oil and gas leases superseded conflicting provisions in the printed forms.…

Co-author Travis Nadalini* If you aren’t quite sure about the difference between trespass to try title and suit to quiet title, Lockhart as Tr. of Lockhart Fam. Bypass Tr. v. Chisos Mins., LLC  explains. But first, ……

Co-author Brittany Blakey In Headington Royalty, Inc. v. Finley Resources, Inc., this release was included in an acreage swap agreement: Headington waives, releases, acquits and discharges Petro Canyon and its affiliates and their respective… predecessors and representatives for any liabilities… related in any way to the Loving County Tract…” The swap agreement did not explicitly mention Finley Resources, and Finley did not execute the agreement. The question Was “predecessors” limited to prior corporate forms of the released party and its affiliates, or did it include predecessors-in-title?  The court held that Finley was not a corporate predecessor of Petro Canyon or its…

Co-author Rusty Tucker What if you pay good money for a mineral interest and record the deed in the official public records, thereby securing your title? What if your predecessors-in-title decide among themselves they made a material mistake in a conveyance way back in the chain of title, fix the alleged error, and record the correction deed? What if they don’t seek your approval and don’t even bother to tell you about the fix? What if that is deemed to be an acceptable way of correcting real property instruments? Here’s what: Chaos, loss of your property rights, not to mention…

In the fifth and final installment on the climate change debate, Gray Reed energy partner Paul Yale considers (and responds to) another criticism of Bjorn Lomborg’s False Alarm: How Climate Panic Costs Us Billions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet. Joseph Stiglitz in the New York Times negatively reviewed False Alarm … .  Stiglitz, well-qualified as a professor of economics at Columbia University and a Nobel Prize laureate, accuses Lomborg of being simple and simplistic and implies that Lomborg admits there’s not much we can do about climate change. This is not an accurate portrayal of the…

CORRECTED Co-author Ashley Atwood* Apache Corporation v. Castex Offshore Inc. et al, answers the question, What constitutes willful misconduct in oil field operations? This was a breach of contract suit involving operator Apache and non-operator Castex. In the exculpatory clause of the model form JOA, the operator can be liable only in the event of gross negligence or willful misconduct. In considering willful misconduct, under both the Texas and Louisiana definitions of “willfulness”, intent to cause harm is not required. The question is whether the evidence establishes that a defendant-operator intentionally or deliberately engaged in improper behavior or mismanagement, without…