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Lenders venturing into Ohio’s oil and gas industry need to be aware of unique features of the industry and how to conduct due diligence to properly evaluate risk. Successful lenders understand how the maturity of an oil and gas play, unique features of oil and gas assets, and a borrower’s experience can impact risk. Unique…

We recently received a question regarding our earlier post Life Estates: Oil and Gas Law Implications, wondering: “What happens to a mineral lease which the life tenant entered into and received renewal payments each year that was never ratified by the remaindermen upon the termination of the life estate and complete possession is realized by the remaindermen?”

The Noble County, Ohio Court of Common Pleas recently addressed this issue in Dickson v. Chesapeake AEC Acquisition, LLC, Case No. 212-0051. In Dickson, a life tenant entered into an oil and gas lease with an exploration company. Just before the original term of the lease expired, the lessee’s successor sent the life tenant a check, as was required to extend the primary term of the lease. The plaintiffs (the remaindermen of the life estate) returned the check and notified the lessee that the lessor owned only a life estate in the property, that the plaintiffs owned the remainder interest in the property, and that the life tenant had no right to lease mineral rights. When the dispute could not be resolved, the remaindermen sued the lessee. The remaindermen then moved for summary judgment, asking the court to declare the lease between the life tenant and the exploration company void.
Continue Reading Life Estates: More Oil and Gas Law Implications

A recent decision by the Court of Appeals of Ohio highlights several errors by a seller of property who may have intended to reserve mineral rights. (See Mong v. Kovach Holdings LLC, 2013 Ohio 882, Court of Appeals of Ohio, Eleventh Appellate District, Lake County, March 11, 2013.)

Facts
In August 2009, McMenamin conveyed real estate in Trumbull County to Mong. The deed contained a reservation:

“Grantor [McMenamin] herein reserves the oil and gas royalties for the duration of her natural life, but for a term not to exceed 10 years from the date hereof [August 4, 2009].”

The minerals were subject to an oil and gas lease. So at this point, McMenamin had a life estate in the royalty interest. Mong had a future interest in the royalties and a present ownership interest of the minerals.
Continue Reading Be Careful Drafting Contracts and Deeds When the Ownership of Minerals Is at Stake

As Ohio enjoys its latest boom in oil and gas exploration, it is important to understand how oil and gas leases are treated in bankruptcy. Unsettled Ohio law regarding whether a debtor owns unextracted oil and gas as part of the debtor’s real property can make this a difficult issue. 

In In re Loveday, No. 10-64110, 2012 WL 1565479 (Bankr. N.D. Ohio May 2, 2012), the Northern District of Ohio examined whether a Chapter 13 debtor had properly included in his bankruptcy schedules his interest in unextracted oil and gas relating to the debtor’s real property. Whether the debtor’s oil and gas rights were properly scheduled was a significant factor in determining whether the debtor could retain the proceeds of the sale of his oil and gas rights. But more importantly, for the companies who sought to purchase the debtor’s oil and gas rights, knowing whether such rights were properly scheduled was necessary to determine whether the debtor had unfettered authority to sell his oil and gas rights without court approval.
Continue Reading What Goes Up … A Quick Glance at Ohio Oil and Gas Leases in Bankruptcy

This is the second in a multi-part series on the practice of compelled participation – forcing unwilling mineral rights owners to participate in oil and gas production from their property. Part I discussed the history and constitutionality of this practice in the U.S.

Every day, crowds of title researchers and landmen pack county offices in Eastern Ohio looking for the owners of unleased property. They are discovering a quilt of landowners with varying degrees of interest in leasing their land for oil and gas drilling. But even after attempting to negotiate with landowners, oil and gas companies often cannot lease enough land to comply with Ohio’s minimum spacing laws. As a result of those laws, uncooperative landowners threaten to interfere with landowners who have leased and want to have oil produced from their land.

Fortunately, under the right circumstances, an operator or the consenting landowners may be able to invoke Ohio’s mandatory pooling laws, the most common form of compelled participation. Mandatory pooling laws force hold-out landowners to submit their mineral rights to oil and gas operations when their recalcitrance prevents an operator from meeting state spacing requirements. Read more about these and other industry terms in a previous post.
Continue Reading A Tool of Last Resort: Mandatory Pooling in Ohio

The Ohio 130th General Assembly is considering two new bills, House Bills 59 and 72. Each bill proposes changes to Ohio’s oil and gas law. Following is a summary of the proposed changes relevant to Ohio’s oil and gas law in each bill.

House Bill 59

On Feb. 12, 2013, Rep. Amstutz (R-Dist 1) introduced House Bill 59, Gov. Kasich’s budget bill. The full Bill Analysis from the Ohio Legislative Service Commission is also available online. The following proposals affect Ohio oil and gas law:

1. New Taxes
The oil and gas tax changes proposed by the Kasich administration have been the most publicized part of H.B. 59. The bill would lower income taxes for all tax brackets by a total of 20% over the next three years, funded by increased oil and gas severance taxes. H.B. 59 also proposes to calculate property taxes from the true value of gas reserves based on the British thermal unit (Btu) content of the gas extracted and the true value of condensate reserves. Other tax provisions in H.B. 59 are differentiated based on whether production is from a horizontal or nonhorizontal well.

A.  Nonhorizontal Wells: H.B. 59 would change ORC §5749.02 to adjust the rate of severance tax on gas from the current 2.5 cents per MCF to the lesser of 3 cents per MCF or 1% of spot market value. It would also raise the tax rate on severance of oil from 10 cents per barrel to 20 cents per barrel. It would exempt nonhorizontal wells for paying severance tax on gas if they produce less than 10 MCF per day in a quarter. 

B.  Horizontal Wells: H.B. 59 would change ORC §5749.02 to levy a severance tax at a rate of 1.5% of the spot market value of oil and condensate produced by horizontal wells for the first five quarters of a well’s production, with the rate jumping to 4% beginning in the fifth quarter. Gas measuring no more than 1,050 Btu would incur a severance tax of 1% of the spot market value of gas. For gas measuring more than 1,050 Btu, the severance tax would be variable, calculated according to the Btu of the gas and the spot price of gas and natural gas liquids (NGLs), with a base rate of 1.5% for the first five quarters and a base rate for gas of 1% and for NGLs of 4% after the first five quarters of production.
Continue Reading House Bills 59 and 72 Propose Changes to Ohio Oil and Gas Law

When oil companies transfer oil property among themselves, they frequently do so by an assignment of lease rights. Sometimes they assign all their interest under a lease, but they often assign just a portion of the lease, or reserve some interest in the property. In the event of multiple assignments — such as when party A assigns to party B, who assigns to party C, and so on — there can be confusion about what was assigned, and who is obligated to do what.

This kind of controversy set the stage for the recent decision by the North Dakota Supreme Court captioned Golden v. SM Energy Co., 2013 ND 17, Feb. 1, 2013. The Golden decision presents an interesting discussion about royalty payments, division orders and assigned obligations. Does this case portend what can happen in Ohio? Only for companies that do not learn from mistakes made in other states.
Continue Reading When Is an Assignment of a Lease not an Assignment of Obligations?

Landowners, in certain situations, can be compelled by the state to combine their mineral interest with their neighbors for the purpose of producing oil and gas. In Part I of a multi-part series, I explain the history and constitutionality of this practice.

What is Compelled Participation?

“Compelled participation” is the term I will use throughout this blog series to refer collectively to mandatory pooling and unitization. Mandatory pooling and unitization are variations of similar state action — forcing mineral owners to include their mineral interests with other owners in a pool or unit. In later posts the two concepts will be distinguished and discussed separately, but because they have the same legal and historical origins, it also makes sense to discuss them collectively. Admittedly, this term is imperfect, but is preferable to untangling the Gordian knot of terminology in this area of oil and gas law (see our earlier blog discussing these confusing terms).

Compelled participation occurs when an operator cannot negotiate an agreement (usually in the form of an oil and gas lease) with enough landowners to legally or efficiently develop oil and gas resources. In those situations the operator can apply for an order from a state agency forcing the recalcitrant landowners to nevertheless participate.
Continue Reading Mandatory Pooling and Unitization in Ohio, Part I: History and Constitutionality

As oil and gas companies flock to eastern Ohio to take advantage of the Utica shale play, trying to figure out “who owns the mineral rights” continues to be a difficult and increasingly important question.

As noted in a recent post, Ohio title insurance companies are excepting from title insurance policies the ownership of the subsurface mineral rights, including interests in oil and gas, and the existence of any leases for the minerals on a given property. Apart from whether title insurance is required by a lender or requested by a party on a transaction, it is difficult to find a title company in Ohio that is willing, and qualified, to render a title opinion on the status of a property’s mineral interests.

Though title insurance companies are not providing mineral estate coverage, mineral rights title searches are still possible, but not easy. Here is the “CliffsNotes” summary:
Continue Reading Who Owns the Mineral Rights on My Property?

A case pending before the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania considers a question that seemingly has been settled in that state for 130 years: Is gas a mineral? 

In Butler v. Charles Powers Estate, Pennsylvania’s highest court will consider whether rights to natural gas produced from the Marcellus shale should qualify as “mineral” rights under an 1881 deed. The deed at issue contained an exception reserving “one half the minerals and Petroleum Oils to said Charles Powers and his heirs and assigns forever…”

In 2009, the owners of the surface estate filed a complaint to quiet title to the property, including the minerals and petroleum oils. The heirs to Powers’ estate opposed the action and sought a declaratory judgment that the reservation rights in the deed’s exception included Marcellus shale gas. The trial court dismissed the heirs’ declaratory judgment action with prejudice, holding that the heirs failed to state a cognizable cause of action based upon two Pennsylvania Supreme Court decisions — Dunham v. Kirkpatrick, 101 Pa. 36 (1882), and Highland v. Commonwealth, 400 Pa. 261, 161 A.2d 390 (1960).
Continue Reading Is Gas a Mineral?