Oil & Gas

If you feel that you are being unfairly compensated with regard to royalty payments on a mineral interest including oil & gas properties, you should contact us immediately. We offer royalty owners a free case review / audit of your interests and can help you in your time of need.

Oil & Gas litigation is a highly specialized field of law. An Oil & Gas law firm not only has to have the knowledge and experience to simply review potential royalty underpayment claims but also needs to have the financial solvency to litigate the cases against some of the most powerful corporations in the world.

An Experienced Oil & Gas Law Firm

Schmidt & Clark, LLP has both the experience and the resources you need to win your case. In fact, both partners in the law firm own interests in oil & gas properties and understand the intricacies of this type of law.

Schmidt & Clark, LLP is dedicated to protecting the rights of the American royalty owner. Our law firm works with landowners, property managers, royalty owners, trustees overseeing mineral rights, and charitable organizations on a regular basis.

Overview of Oil & Gas Royalty / Lease Underpayment Lawsuits

In an era of unprecedented profits within the oil and gas industry, the American royalty owner is still very much at risk of being unfairly compensated by the Operators and Producers who routinely fail to pay fair royalties.

Sometimes Producers make underpayments to royalty owners simply because of the complexities involved in today’s oil and gas leases and related agreements. However, often Producers blatantly fail to pay fair royalties. In either case, the royalty owner has a legal claim for compensation.

Producers have a responsibility to behave as a “reasonably prudent operator” under all circumstances. Unfortunately, it is often the case that the Producers fail to obey many express and implied covenants in their leases, operating agreements, and unit agreements, which may ultimately result in gross underpayments being made to the royalty owner.

When producers fail to act as a “reasonably prudent operator,” the following catastrophic consequences may occur:

• royalties worth thousands or millions of dollars go unpaid;
• mineral estates are depleted, wasted or destroyed;
• surface estates are damaged or polluted beyond remediation; and
• incestuous marketing arrangements (whereby, for example, a producer cheaply sells to itself the mineral estate’s valuable production) burden mineral estates for decades.