In this case, the Fort Worth Court of Appeals held that the trial court lacked authority to grant a temporary injunction against the Town of Flower Mound enjoining the enforcement of a local ordinance that limited truck traffic to and from well sites.
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This case involves a dispute as to whether a competitor saltwater disposal well operator is an “affected person” under 16 Tex. Admin. Code §3.9(5)(E) and, thus, whether such competitor has standing to challenge an application for disposal well permit.
NGL Water Solutions Eagle Ford (NGL) operated a saltwater disposal well under a permit issued by the Texas Railroad Commission (RRC). In April of 2016, one of its competitors, Blue Water, filed an application to operate a commercial injection well at a nearby location. NGL protested the application. At the RRC hearing, Blue Water claimed that NGL was not entitled to protest Blue Water’s application because NGL was not an “affected person”. NGL argued that Blue Water’s permit was not in the “public interest” because there was no present industry need for additional disposal capacity in the area, because NGL had existing injection wells with excess capacity in the area.
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In Enerlex, the Austin Court of Appeals held that a mineral buyer could not demand payment from the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts for prior unclaimed royalty payments relating to the purchased royalty interest, because those royalty payments were turned over to the Comptroller under the prior owner/grantor’s name.
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In this business torts case between pipeline monitoring companies, Houston’s First Court of Appeals held that the trial court erred by denying a motion to dismiss pursuant to the Texas Citizens Participation Act (TCPA). At issue were causes of action for defamation, business disparagement, tortious interference with contract, and tortious interference with prospective business relations. Each of these causes of action centered around an alleged conversation where Kelly McDonald contacted a former client of 3B Inspection, and said 3B was “not a real company” and its principal “did not know what he was doing.” 3B also asserted that McDonald Oilfield intentionally cancelled sponsorship of federal “Operator Qualifications,” allegedly with “malicious intent to shut down the project and cause harm to 3B Inspection’s business relationship with its client.”
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In this case, the San Antonio Court of Appeals held that a mineral subcontractor claiming a mineral lien must conclusively establish that its labor, materials, machinery, and supplies were “used in” mineral activities, not merely “related to” mineral activities.
ELG entered into a contract with Turn-Key Specialists, Inc. to add natural gas bullet storage tanks to a treatment facility. Turn-Key then subcontracted to Stranco. Stranco was presumably not paid for its work, and Turn-Key filed for bankruptcy. Stranco filed suit against ELG, and moved for a partial summary judgment on its claim to foreclose on its alleged mineral lien. The trial court granted Stranco’s motion and awarded Stranco attorney’s fees.
Stranco contended that it was only required to prove that its labor and services were “related to” mineral activities. The court acknowledged that Section 56.002 of the Texas Property Code provides for mineral liens “to secure payment for labor or services related to the mineral activities.” However, the appellate court pointed out that Stranco must qualify as a “mineral subcontractor” in order to claim a lien, and the statutory definition of “mineral subcontractor” requires a mineral subcontractor “conclusively establish the labor and services it provided were ‘used in’ mineral activities.” The court also pointed out that “mineral activities” is defined, in pertinent part, as certain types of work “on oil or gas pipelines.”
The appellate court then turned to Stranco’s summary judgment evidence. Stranco primarily relied upon an affidavit from its owner, stating that Stranco performed mineral activities on ELG’s property, including work on the “pipelines and the pipeline terminal station” and furnishing materials “used in connection with … pipelines and the pipeline terminal station.”
The appellate court characterized Stranco’s affidavit as conclusory because it failed to provide any facts showing how Stranco’s work and materials on the bullet storage tanks were connected to the oil and gas pipelines. The court acknowledged that, to be “used in” mineral activities, the work did not have to be performed directly on the pipelines themselves, but Stranco’s summary judgment evidence failed to establish a link between the bullet storage tanks and the pipelines.
The failure to link Stranco’s work to the pipelines themselves was further exacerbated by ELG’s summary judgment evidence. ELG submitted two affidavits which described the work Stranco performed as being limited to the addition of bullet storage tanks within the facility, and not work on pipelines themselves. ELG’s affidavits further indicated that no pipelines that combine in the facility and the pipelines were actually segregated from the facility. The court explained that “we must resolve all doubts in favor of ELG.”
As a result, the San Antonio Court of Appeals held that the trial court erred in granting summary judgment in favor of Stranco, reversed the trial court’s judgment, and remanded the cause to the trial court for further proceedings.
The Plaintiffs, a putative class of lessors under oil and gas leases, brought claims against Talisman Energy USA, Inc. (“Talisman”) relating to Talisman’s “volumetric” method of calculating royalties. Some of the gas produced is “wet gas,” which requires stabilization prior to sale, which results in a reduction or “shrinkage” of the volume sold. Talisman commingled the production from numerous leases for processing at the stabilization facility, and then allocated the sales volumes back to individual leases on the basis of wellhead metered volumes (a “volumetric” allocation), and applied an estimate of overall shrinkage.
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This case out of the Houston First Court of Appeals involves a breach of retained liabilities provisions in a purchase and sale agreement, focusing on the legal and factual sufficiency of the jury’s damages award in light of its alleged failure to account for the seller’s evidence of an offset, whether the attorneys’ fees awarded by the trial court were reasonable and necessary, and whether it was an error for the court to admit evidence of attorneys’ fees in light of untimely disclosures.
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This oil and gas lease termination dispute centered on a disagreement as to what type of “drilling operations” constituted “continuous drilling operations” under a continuous development clause. The court held that the lessee’s reworking of existing wells did not satisfy the continuous development clause, resulting in a partial termination of the lease. The court held that, while the lease contained a definition of “drilling operations” that expressly included “reworking,” that was a general definition that did not control over the more specific terms in the continuous development clause. In reaching its conclusion, the court analyzed the role of several lease provisions, including the continuous development clause, retained acreage provision, temporary cessation clause, and an agreed definition of “drilling operations.”
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Due perhaps to geologic serendipity, Texas has a long and extensive history of oil and gas exploration and production. Consequently, much of Texas’ lands have experienced severance of mineral from surface estate and resulting complications of concurrent occupancy by parties whose interests are not always fully aligned. In Texas, the owner of a severed mineral interest (and its mineral lessee) generally enjoy an implied right to enter upon the surface and to use the surface estate for the purpose of exploring, drilling, producing, transporting, and marketing the minerals. The Texas Supreme Court has described this implied right as “a well established doctrine from the earliest days of the common law.” The underlying rational is that a grant, lease, or reservation of minerals would be worthless if the grantee, reserver, or lessee did not have access to and use of the surface estate.
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The Texas Supreme Court recently issued its opinion in Texas Outfitters v. Nicholson, addressing the duties an executive mineral owner owes to non-executive owners. The case focused on when an executive owner has a duty to sign a lease and to what extent efforts to protect or benefit the surface estate can impact this duty. The Court affirmed the trial court’s judgment holding that the executive breached its duty and affirmed the trial court’s award of $867,654.32 plus interest and costs.
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