PA Court Ruling A Blow To Oil & Gas Industry's Assumptions On Rule Of Capture: "This Ain't Texas"
EDIT
Courts in the Midwest and Appalachia used to lean toward the precedents set by bigger oil and gas states like Texas and Oklahoma, said John Lowe, a Southern Methodist University law professor. "Well, you look at the recent decisions out of Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia," he said. "They're kind of saying, 'This ain't Texas.'"
The Pennsylvania court's recent decision is a perfect example of Marcellus Shale case law that shirks a Texas standard. Judges in the Lone Star State dealt with how the rule of capture should apply to fracking a decade ago and reached the opposite result. The Texas Supreme Court found in Coastal Oil & Gas Corp. v. Garza Energy Trust that drillers are not trespassing when their wells suck up oil and gas that migrates through fracking-formed cracks that reach adjacent land.
In this year's Briggs v. Southwestern Energy Production Co., the Pennsylvania Superior Court rejected the Texas approach. A neighbor's shale oil and gas migrates only through man-made fractures created by drillers, the judges reasoned, so those drillers should be on the hook for trespass claims when their wells drain the hydrocarbons next door.
A federal judge in West Virginia was similarly skeptical of the Texas court's interpretation, writing in 2013 that it "gives oil and gas operators a blank check to steal from the small landowner." That order was later scrapped when the parties in the lawsuit moved toward settlement, and the issue could come up again in West Virginia.
EDIT
https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060091449