I am looking into filing a claim against a company that bought a old oil field in our area. The field been abandon for several years and the TRRC been out checking out the wells after i filed a complain. They had roughly 70 barrels of oil on a well location on our place spilled from a rusted out tank. Another well location had over 700 barrels of oil spill from it. Another location was hit by lighting in 2013 and the company hasn’t done anything in cleaning it up. All the well locations has been stripped of any of value. None of the 89 wells in the field hasn’t produced any in 5-10 years. The RRC told me this is my best chance to get me minerals back and get these location cleaned up. Has anyone ever done this? And what are the chances of winning this.
I knew a man that had several of the original wells drilled on their family property about 40 to 50 year’s or so ago in the Alabama Ferry Field. He bought his own measuring stick and started checking the wells himself. They were stealing from him. His initials were J.W.
I know who JW was. I worked in the field piping out wells and laying pipe lines in the field. The Alabama ferry field was projected to only last 10 years. But they water flooded and killed it.
I would not take legal advice from someone at RRC. If the lease has expired then you have your minerals to lease. An oil and gas attorney can help you take appropriate steps to terminate the lease. If production has ceased and there are spills and wells to plug, then RRC needs to force the operator to fix this. If the operator has disappeared, then the RRC will have to plug the wells. You need to be careful not to take any actions which might subject you to personal liability and responsibility for plugging and clean-up.
It pretty dang crazy with the RRC the regional office in Kilgore had their field guy checking all the violations
Sorry hit the button before i was ready. Then Austin approving their operator license before seeing the violations sent to austin from kilgore. I sometime feel the RRC is more for the companies than the landowners or environment. I will definitely check into what happens if I follow through with this claim.
The RRC, like the OCC in Oklahoma, has 1 job to do and that is to keep the states tax commission full of money.
You got that right. The poor field guy for the RRC runs his butt all over this field taking pictures of everything that wrong. Then the state approves Newco oil and gas to hold it. But then the state want let them to produce anything until everything is fixed. So then all of us mineral owners/ land owners have sit while well location that are a mess.
The water flood project way back then took advantage of the land and mineral owners. The land and mineral owners did grave damage to themselves, land and the mineral owners. Probably basically they practically HBP’d themselves. The State of Texas should be “forced” to fix these problems asp.
MO5- so think the state of Texas should arbitrarily void contracts they were voluntarily entered into?
What you don’t understand is that the mineral and land owners were lied to and taken advantage of and continue to be illegally!
These crazy thing is people that didn’t join the water flood their wells where flooded out with water the company injected into the ground. People were told if you don’t join the unit if their wells quit producing you want get a check. But if you join unit you will get a percentage of what minerals you have.
Waterflood units were economically advantageous to mineral owners in most circumstances. They were formed when the production of old shallow wells in the same formation dropped off and many became uneconomic. The geology under these wells was not on a flat even level, but had low and high spots. The wells were unitized so that produced water from these wells could be pumped into the deeper wells or wells located at the edges and drive the oil upward toward the shallower wells or more central wells. The production was shared / allocated based on several tract factors including the historical well production, the location such as being at a high point, etc. This meant that overall production and revenues would be maximized for everyone for many more years, often decades. There are still many of these units in operation. This was long before anyone heard of horizontal drilling in deeper formations. And many units are located in areas where there are no or limited deeper formations. Mineral owners were not lied to and had the opportunity to read the agreements and consent to the unit and tracts. This was a major source of income during the lean years when the price of oil fell to $5-$10 and there was no new drilling. That said, the RRC has allowed wells to be shut-in for decades instead of being plugged. This has allowed operations to be transferred to operators with few assets, some of which go bankrupt or simply disappear, and has left 1,000’s of wells on RRC orphan well lists and for the RRC to pay to plug. And the RRC is still allowing this to happen. So keep filing complaints about any leaking wells and demand that the RRC force the operator to clean up.
Great Post, people pay attention! Thanks
I have a suspension that the current operator or operators of this “Alabama Ferry Field” water flood group plans to hold this lease position for a possible upcoming Deep Bossier/Haynesville play that will expand to this area and East into East Texas.
Never heard of a good faith claim outside the household.
Is it tangible
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