The San Antonio Court of Appeals recently issued an interesting opinion regarding a well operator’s claim that H2S/CO2 from a nearby injection well damaged its leased minerals. The case has been appealed to the Texas Supreme Court and oral argument has been scheduled for December 2020.
The case is Swift Energy Operating, LLC v. Regency Field Services LLC. In 2009, Swift, the Plaintiff, leased approximately 4200 acres of a ranch in McMullen County, Texas and operated a number of producing wells on the ranch. In 2006, Regency obtained a permit from the Texas Railroad Commission to operate an injection well in which they would dispose of a gas mixture of concentrated hydrogen sulfide (H2S) and carbon dioxide (CO2) by pumping it into the Wilcox formation. In its application for the permit, Regency submitted a plume model to the Railroad Commission that predicted that the injected material would spread horizontally by approximately 2200 feet after 40 years of injection. The review by the Railroad Commission staff indicated that they believed that shale formations above and below the disposal zone would prevent vertical migration of the injected gas.
In 2012, another operator in the area discovered H2S in one of the its wells and testing indicated it came from the Regency injection well. As result, that operator had to plug and abandon that well. An employee of that operator emailed Swift about these developments.
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