Roberts v. Lone Star Producing Company

369 S.W.2d 373, 19 Oil & Gas Rep. 274, 1963 Tex. App. LEXIS 2138
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedJune 21, 1963
Docket3813
StatusPublished
Cited by7 cases

This text of 369 S.W.2d 373 (Roberts v. Lone Star Producing Company) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Texas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Roberts v. Lone Star Producing Company, 369 S.W.2d 373, 19 Oil & Gas Rep. 274, 1963 Tex. App. LEXIS 2138 (Tex. Ct. App. 1963).

Opinion

GRISSOM, Chief Justice.

Mrs. Archa F. Roberts, individually and as independent executrix of the estate of J. H. Roberts, deceased, sued Lone Star Producing Company. She sought construction of an assignment of oil and gas leases, lease amendments and division orders executed by her to Lone Star. The leases assigned were pooled, or unitized, by Lone Star with other lands and leases to form units 1, 7 and 8 of the Travis Peak formation involved here. Mrs. Roberts contends that she retained, in addition to an overriding royalty of 54 of ⅞ of the oil and gas produced above the Travis Peak formation, an oil payment of $75,000.00 from ½6⅛ of Piths of the oil and gas produced from the Travis Peak formation; that Lone Star is producing gas from that formation but is paying her on said oil payment only ¾6⅛ of piths of the production allocated to the units involved, while she is entitled to ½6⅛ of J^ths of the gas produced from the leases assigned by her to Lone Star.

The case was submitted to the court upon an agreed statement of facts. The court found that the lease amendments executed by Mrs. Roberts authorized Lone Star to pool the assigned leases with other lands and leases included in said units; that the declaration of unitization by Lone Star of Travis Peak gas units 1, 7 and 8 pooled and combined the interest of plaintiff with other leases and lands included therein; that execution by plaintiff of division orders applicable to units 1 and 8 ratified defendant’s, declaration of such units and subj ected plaintiff’s interest in those two units to the-unitization provision; that acceptance by-plaintiff of payments accruing to her interest in unit 1 upon a unitized basis from August 1, 1956, until about May 30th, 1962,. constituted a ratification of unit 1 so that her interests therein were bound by the-unitization provisions; that the %6th of' piths of production reserved by plaintiff in, the assignment, which interest Mrs. Roberts, calls an oil and gas payment, is an overriding royalty within the meaning of the-lease amendments which amendments authorized pooling and payment of overriding-royalty based on the production allocated’ to said units because (1) such interest is, as-a matter of law, an overriding royalty and’ (2) the parties defined that interest as am overriding royalty in the paragraph that created it. The court rendered judgment-that plaintiff take nothing. Plaintiff has-appealed.

It was agreed that on May 17, 1955, Mrs. Roberts owned, in the capacities in whichi she sued, an undivided ½ interest in the-leases assigned in so far as they include-the Travis Peak formation; that she assigned said leases to Lone Star as to all' formations down to the base of the Travis-Peak formation; that the Bacon and Ro-dessa lime formations have been unitized by-agreement and are not involved here. The-only formation involved here is Travis-Peak. The original leases did not permit, the lessee to pool, or unitize, the land covered thereby with other lands and leases... After Lone Star acquired said leases it ob— *375 tained from all the “land owners” permission to pool the lands covered by said leases with other lands and leases, as it has done. Lone Star has formed pools, or units, numbered 1 through 10, for production of gas from the Travis Peak formation. At the time Mrs. Roberts assigned the leases to Lone Star, the Riddlesperger Well Number 1 was producing gas from the Travis Peak formation and plaintiff executed a division order effective May 1, 1955, which referred to Mrs. Robert’s $75,000.00 interest as a ■“.0625 O.R.I.” It provided that the stated division should continue “until the date on which the Lone Star unitization agreement covering this property is filed of record—

The preamble to Article 2 of the assignment recited that Mrs. Roberts excepted and reserved “the following overriding royalty interests and oil and gas payments.” Paragraph 1 of Article 2 then provided that Mrs. Roberts excepted and reserved an overriding royalty of of ^ths of the oil and gas produced above the Travis Peak formation. (That is not involved here.) Paragraph 2 of Article 2 dealt with production from the Travis Peak formation and contained the provision reserving the $75,-000.00 payment in controversy. Said reservation is as follows:

“2. The equal one-sixteenth (⅛6) part of all oil, gas — and all other minerals which may be produced and saved by Lone Star Producing Company — from all wells now or hereafter completed and producing oil or gas from the Travis Peak Formation in the lands described in Exhibit ‘A’ — until such time as Assignor shall have received from the proceeds of the sale of said one-sixteenth (¾6) part of such oil, gas — and other minerals over and above, and free and clear of any cost, charge, expense or deduction of any kind, including but not limited to gross production, pipe line, gathering and severance taxes, (but not including ad valorem or federal income taxes) the sum of Seventy-Five Thousand and no/100 ($75,000.00) Dollars, whereupon this reservation shall terminate; and thereafter the working interest in the oil, gas and other minerals under the aforementioned leases shall be free and clear of the overriding royahy payment provided for in this section 2 of Article 11 hereof. — The overriding royalty production payment herein reserved shall be in addition to all other outstanding overriding royalty, production payments other than such overriding royalty, production or other payments that may have been assigned or reserved by said Assignor since May 1, 1951, the date J. H. Roberts acquired the aforementioned oil, gas and mineral leases. In the event said Assignor owns less than the interest so acquired by J. H. Roberts on May 1, 1951, the overriding royalty production payment hereinabove provided for in this Section 2 of this Article 11 shall be decreased proportionately.”

In 1958 Mrs. Roberts executed two lease amendments. The first recited that Mrs. Roberts owned “a mineral and/or royalty and/or overriding royalty interest” and that Lone Star owned the leasehold interest in certain leases and that they desired to amend said leases to provide for pooling. It gave Lone Star authority to pool the land covered by said leases, or any part thereof, with any other land or leases it deemed advisable. It provided that Lone Star should record an instrument describing the pooled acreage. It then provided that “The entire acreage so pooled into a unit shall be treated for all purposes, except the payment of royalties, as if it were included in this lease, and drilling or reworking operations thereon or production of oil or gas therefrom, or the completion thereon of a well as a shut-in gas well, shall be considered for all purposes, except the payment of royalties, as if such operations were on or such production were from or such completion were on the land covered by this lease, whether or not the well or wells be located on the premises covered by this lease. In lieu of the royalties elsewhere herein speci *376

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369 S.W.2d 373, 19 Oil & Gas Rep. 274, 1963 Tex. App. LEXIS 2138, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/roberts-v-lone-star-producing-company-texapp-1963.