A jury verdict out of Oklahoma may be a harbinger of what’s on the horizon for the many battles being waged in courthouses across the country between operators of horizontal wells and the vertical drillers who say their wells have been damaged—or destroyed—by hydraulic fracturing. Also, the Fifth Circuit puts the kibosh on a pipeline regulator’s attempts to implement a strict liability regime when Congress never authorized one.
The Battle Between Horizontal and Vertical Wells
KRCL’s Energy Practice Group Featured in New Law360 Series
A member of KRCL’s Energy Practice Group, trial lawyer Tom Ciarlone, was the subject of the first installment of Law360’s new “Expert Analysis” series, What I Learned In My First Year, featuring attorneys’ true-life tales from the earliest days of their legal careers. You can read the article by clicking here.
KRCL Energy Law Podcast: iOS and Android Apps Available for Download
Yes, there’s an app for that! We’re excited to announce the release of custom iOS and Android apps for our podcast, Energy Law Round Up. Get the latest news and developments in oil-and-gas law pushed directly to your iPhone, iPad, or Android device. Download the iPhone/iPad app today by clicking here (http://tinyurl.com/energyios), or the Android app by following this link (http://tinyurl.com/energyandroid). The Energy Law Round Up app contains the following features: Car mode: rotate your…
A Cautionary Tale for Operators
In this week’s episode of our energy law podcast, find out about new guidance for calculating royalties on federal oil and gas leases, the BLM’s termination of restrictive Obama-era fracking rules, and a cautionary tale for operators who might mistakenly assume that they have a security interest in the oil they sell to downstream purchasers.
Everything You Need to Know About Oil and Gas Law—2Q17 Edition
Earlier this year, we brought you our first quarter update on major developments in oil and gas law in Texas and throughout the country. Now, we are back with our second quarter update. We began 2Q17 with a discussion of the intersection of the oil patch with class actions and the Fair Labor Standards Act; the federal government’s liability for the environmental cleanup of refinery waste; and a shortsighted discovery ruling that could have left the Dakota…
Oil and Gas Law: 2017 Midyear Update (Complimentary Whitepaper)
Available now for download is our firm’s complimentary white paper, Oil & Gas Law: 2017 Midyear Update. Click here, or on the image below, to access our informative, 25-page summary of some of the most critical legal developments in the industry so far this year.
Oil-and-Gas Law Update: July 11, 2017
Our energy law podcast is back from a brief hiatus for the Independence Day holiday with a quick look at the legal developments in oil-and-gas law that July has brought us so far.
Class Action Certification In the Oil Patch: Red Herrings Often Abound
Increasingly, class actions are—for all intents and purposes—won or lost at the certification stage. After all, if a class is certified, especially under the heightened standards for class treatment that have been articulated by the United States Supreme Court in recent years, the exposure for defendants in the vast majority of cases is simply too great to risk a jury trial on the merits. This is, of course, why lucrative settlements often follow so closely…
Drilling on Federal Lands: Department of Interior Issues Order to Curb Delays
Yesterday, the Secretary of the Interior, Ryan Zinke, signed an order that seeks to tamp down on delays in the permitting of federal land for oil-and-gas exploration and production activities. The Interior Department’s press release is available here, and the order itself can be accessed at this link. As of January 31st of this year, there was a backlog of over 2,800 applications for drilling permits on federal leases. In a telephonic press conference, Secretary Zinke…
Seeing Double: Operator Must Pay Royalties To Multiple Units, Says Texas Supreme Court
Late last week, the Texas Supreme Court told a cautionary tale for operators with its unanimous opinion in Samson Exploration LLC v. T.S. Reed Properties Inc., which addressed the circumstance in which a well is situated within not just one pooled unit, but instead within two overlapping units. The operator, Samson Exploration, took it upon itself to pay royalties from the well to interest owners from one of the units, to the exclusion of the…