Water: The Hot Commodity in the Permian and Elsewhere
Charles Sartain of Gray Reed & McGraw summarizes in a blog post the takeaways from a recent presentation two of the firm’s lawyers made recently on the use, control and ownership of water in oil and gas operations.
“Groundwater is privately owned by the owner of the surface estate,” he explains. “As with oil and gas, it is subject to the rule of capture. Landowners’ requests that the rule be modified in favor of the ‘rule of reasonable use’ have been rejected by the Texas Supreme Court.”
The post discusses the questions around ownership of produced water in the oil patch.
