Insight and Analysis of Legal Issues Impacting the Energy Industry
By Jonathan A. Hunter
In Weyerhaeuser Co. v. A. D. Hinton, No. 07-30117 (5th Cir., May 1, 2007), the Fifth Circuit upheld a decision by the Federal District Court for the Western District of Louisiana rejecting a challenge to a group of mineral servitudes created in 1971. The plaintiff landowner, Weyerhaeuser Company, asserted…
At its April 11 lease sale, the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources will offer four offshore tracts, one in the Grand Isle area and three in the Main Pass area. The Department will also offer 17 tracts in waters that the state designates as inland. Six tracts are in the Chandeluer Sound area, two will cover portions of…
United States Senators have introduced three new bills that may impact offshore drilling:
Senators Byron Dorgan, D.-N.D., and Larry Crais, R-Idaho, have introduced the Security and Fuel Efficiency Energy Act 2007, S. 875. The legislation would allow offshore drilling in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico to as close as 45 miles off the coast of…
On February 13, the Texas Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case involving important issues to the Texas oil and gas industry, including whether or not Texas recognizes an independent private cause of action for waste based on violations of Texas conservation laws and whether an oil and gas lessee commits waste by plugging…
In the continuing dispute between federal offshore lessees and the Department of the Interior over missing price threshold provisions in 1998 and 1999 federal oil and gas leases, MMS announced today that it has signed agreements with BP, ConocoPhillips, Marathon Oil Company, Shell, and Walter Oil and Gas Corporation.
In BHP America Petroleum Co. v. Burton, 549 U.S. — (2006), the Supreme Court resolved a legal issue that has been at the center of federal royalty litigation for twenty years: viz., whether 28 U.S.C. § 2415(a), which imposes a 6-year statute of limitations for Government “every action for money damages … founded …
