On Friday, a deeply divided Texas Supreme Court—in a surprising turn of events—disturbed long-standing rules for interpreting mineral conveyances in its 5-4 decision in Wenske v. Ealy. There, when the Wenskes bought property in Lavaca County in 1998 […]
On March 2, 2016, Aubrey McClendon, the former head of Chesapeake Energy, was indicted on federal antitrust charges. One day later this pioneer and leader in the shale revolution tragically died in a car accident in Oklahoma. Although the criminal […]
On Friday, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that production payments, like overriding royalty payments, cannot survive the termination of their respective oil and gas leases. In doing so, the Supreme Court stamped out a potentially “backwards” line […]
In Chesapeake v. Hyder, the Texas Supreme Court addressed the proper calculation of a “cost-free” overriding royalty interest (“ORRI”). The court has now asked the Hyders to respond to Chesapeake’s motion for rehearing of the decision in the […]
Chesapeake has not had a good run in the courts lately. It has been hammered over the last year with lawsuits brought by mineral lessors alleging that the natural gas giant has swindled them out of millions of dollars in royalty payments. And the plaintiffs […]