Monthly Archives: August 2004

It’s a Gas

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Here’s a case I have on appeal at present. Been working on the brief this weekend. This is the opening “Nature of the Case” paragraph of the brief.

This case is about a gas well in Douglas County, Kansas. Appellants bought a home and 32.7 acres, including the gas well, not knowing that appellee, who owned an adjoining 7.2 acres, had an underground connection to the well. The case is in the courts for determination of whether appellants’ title to their property is burdened with a covenant giving appellee an enforceable right to take gas from appellants’ well. The district court held that it is and permanently enjoined appellants from disconnecting appellee from the well. Appellants disagree.

I still can’t believe the district court ruling. Neither can any of my colleagues, other than the appellee’s lawyer. When the appellants bought the property, there was nothing on the record about the appellee having any gas rights. Her lawyer recorded an instrument two years later. If that really works, we’re all in trouble!

Making Friends With The Landowner

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One of the first things I learned in oil and gas, and which I have tried to preach to my operator clients, is the importance of the relationship with the landowner. So many operators would get their lease and then basically forget that there was anything else that mattered besides their oil wells. Until a cow would end up dead in a pit, or big patch of beans died from salt water, and the landowner called up hopping mad. And, even then, dealing with the problem was considered a pain in the ass as opposed to discharging an obligation. Even without such unfortunate incidents, or perhaps because they’re virtually inevitable, I’ve told my clients to at least send the landowner a Christmas card every year, better yet a turkey or box of candy, better yet just drop by once in a while and have coffee. Very cheap insurance. Of course, better yet would be to also keep the landowner informed on a regular basis about what’s going on with lease operations; if wells are going to be drilled, why; if wells aren’t going to be drilled, why; if a road needs to be built, why; etc. When it comes to recommending that level of “cooperation” to clients I’m often met with a set of rolling eyes and a look communicating without words the message that I should stick to practicing law and leave the practical side of operating a lease to people who know better. And, so, I never run out of opportunities to practice that part of oil and gas law that has to do with who legally has the upper hand in a given set of circumstances, the landowner or the operator. It’s a question that, more often than not, could have been avoided.

I Kinda Like It

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I kinda like the overall appearance of this blog. I do like blue! The right panel is an enigma. On my desktop PC it looks gray. On my laptop it looks powder blue. I suppose I could take a reading from a color palette using a graphics program to get a numeric value to see where it actually falls in the spectrum. Or not. Chances are, the design will be tinkered with from time to time. The real challenge is going to be content. Something relevant and topical (is there a difference?) to oil and gas. Like, how about those gas prices? Which most people take to mean at the pump when they fill up their car. In my line of work, it means natural gas, such as $5.43/Mcf, where Mcf stands for thousand cubic feet. Technically speaking, that would be at natural pressure, and sea level. I think there’s a certain temperature, too, which I forget. A thousand cubic feet sounds like a lot, but it’s just the contents of a 10 x 10 x 10 foot cube. One of these times I’ll try to remember to figure up how many cubic feet of oil there are in a barrel. Can you believe in 28 years of law practice I never needed to know that? I can tell you this, though: a cubic foot of oil on the ground looks like a LOT!