Law Commons^™

The proverbial “bundle of sticks” is an analogy familiar to real property scholars. The analogy compares property ownership to a bundle of sticks—that is, ownership composed of separate and individual property rights—where each “stick” represents a right or stream of benefits available to the property owner. Under the centuries-old common law ad coelum doctrine, real property contained all lands from the core of the earth to the sky. Although this “heaven-to-hell” doctrine is now limited, oil and gas still composes that part of subsurface real property, sometimes called the mineral estate. In oil and gas law, the mineral property bundle …

Of all the contracts used in the oil and gas industry, none is as important as the oil and gas lease. It is the foundational instrument in oil and gas and a required prerequisite to development for those who do not own the mineral estate. Its uniqueness arises in that unlike most other oil and gas contracts, it is both a contract and a conveyance of property. Part I of this article begins with an overview of the mineral estate, the predecessor to an oil and gas lease. Part II examines theories of oil and gas rights ownership and oil …