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24
T H E P R I M E R U S P A R A D I G M
Shayne D. Moses, David A. Palmer and Timothy D. Howell are
partners with Moses, Palmer & Howell. The firm provides legal advice
and counseling in the areas of oil and gas law, banking matters,
business and commercial litigation, real estate and family law.
Moses, Palmer & Howell, L.L.P.
309 West 7th Street, Suite 815
Fort Worth, Texas 76102
817.458.3535 Phone
817.255.9199 Fax
smoses@mph-law.com
dpalmer@mph-law.com
thowell@mph-law.com
www.mph-law.com
Shayne D. Moses
David A. Palmer
Timothy D. Howell
Oftentimes tension arises between
landowners desiring to protect the surface
of their properties and mineral owners
wanting to drill wells or conduct other
surface operations to produce minerals
underlying those properties. This tension is
magnified in jurisdictions like Texas, where
the surface and the mineral estates can be,
and often are, severed from each other and
owned by different parties. Disputes about
these divergent property interests will
likely become more frequent as drilling
continues to expand into new shale plays
across the United States and in more
urban areas.
A review of Texas law on this issue
is instructive because, "[g]iven Texas'
unrivaled leadership in shaping the
nation's dynamic energy sector, `[o]ther
states frequently look to Texas decisions
when confronted with a new or unsettled
issue of oil and gas law.'"
1
Getty Oil Co.
v. Jones
2
is the seminal Texas case on the
tension between the surface and mineral
estates. In Getty, the Texas Supreme Court
observed that "the oil and gas estate is the
dominant estate in the sense that use of
as much of the premises as is reasonably
necessary to produce and remove the
minerals is held to be impliedly authorized
by the lease."
3
This rule generally makes
sense because "a grant or reservation of
minerals would be worthless if the grantee
and reserver could not enter upon the
land in order to explore for and extract the
minerals granted or reserved."
4
Although mineral owners possess the
dominant estate, Texas law provides that
they must conduct their operations with
"due regard" for the surface owner's rights.
5
Based on this "due regard" concept, the
Getty court articulated what is known as
the "accommodation doctrine" in an effort
to reconcile this tension between the two
estates. The accommodation doctrine holds
that "where there is an existing use by
the surface owner which would otherwise
be precluded or impaired, and where
under the established practices in the
industry there are alternatives available
to the lessee whereby the minerals can
be recovered, the rules of reasonable
usage of the surface may require the
adoption of an alternative by the lessee."
6
The surface owner seeking to invoke the
accommodation doctrine has the burden of
establishing that the lessee's surface use
is not reasonably necessary, considering
"usual, customary and reasonable practices
in the industry under like circumstances
of time, place and servient estate uses."
7
The unreasonableness of a mineral owner's
surface use may be established by showing
the availability of other non-interfering and
reasonable means to produce the minerals
that will permit the existing use of the
surface to continue.
8
The Texas Supreme Court recently
revisited the accommodation doctrine
in Merriman v. XTO Energy, Inc.
9
In
Merriman, the landowner brought suit
to enjoin XTO from drilling a well that
he alleged failed to accommodate his
existing cattle operation.
10
In affirming
a summary judgment for XTO, the court
of appeals found the landowner failed
to prove that: (1) he did not have any
reasonable alternative "agricultural" uses
for the subject tract; and (2) relocating his
cattle operation to other tracts held under
short-term leases was not a reasonable
The Dominant and Servient Estates in
Oil and Gas Operations: The Accommodation
Doctrine and Its Limits
North America