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Crystal Gazing: Foretelling The Next Decade In Oil And Gas Law, Joseph A. Schremmer
Crystal Gazing: Foretelling The Next Decade In Oil And Gas Law, Joseph A. Schremmer
Faculty Scholarship
This chapter attempts to predict the major issues oil and gas law will encounter in the 2020s. Yet even before the first draft could be completed, the industry landscape changed unexpectedly. As this chapter goes to press, the global and domestic economies are just starting to emerge from a sharp downturn brought on by the outbreak of COVID-19. Oil and natural gas prices collapsed to levels not seen in decades. Against this unforeseen backdrop, the legal changes facing oil and gas development in the United States look somewhat different. But one element of our new reality is consistent with this …
Getting Past Possession: Subsurface Property Disputes As Nuisances, Joseph A. Schremmer
Getting Past Possession: Subsurface Property Disputes As Nuisances, Joseph A. Schremmer
Faculty Scholarship
Property rights in the subsurface of land are adapting to accommodate modern activities like massive hydraulic fracturing (fracing). Property rights will need to continue adapting if they are to accommodate other developing activities like large-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS). Courts and commentators rarely approach the nature of subsurface property directly. They tend instead to discuss appropriate standards for tort liability when disputes arise—for example when artificial fissures from a frac treatment extend into and drain oil or gas from a neighbor’s land. The case law and literature generally approach unauthorized subterranean invasions as trespasses. Because the tort of trespass …