Legal Issues Facing Ohio Producers

Greg Russell, a partner in the Vorys Columbus office and the chair of the firm's energy subgroup, authored an article for the OOGA Bulletin titled "Legal Issues Facing Ohio Producers."  The article focused on novel claims being asserted by Ohio landowners to challenge lease validity and resource development. 

The article states: 

"Over the last several years, the industry has increasingly seen landowners assert more complex challenges to lease validity and resource development. For instance, landowners began'with (unsuccessful) claims that their decades-old leases failed because they had not been notarized properly. They are now asserting claims that are at once more traditional also more complicated, involving, for example, covenants to develop and explore that have remained largely unaddressed in Ohio.

In Alford v. Collins-McGregor Operating Co., the Supreme Court is addressing whether producers in Ohio have an implied covenant to further explore their leases (i.e., after they are already producing the lease) on a formation-by-formation basis, and if so, what the proper remedy is if there is a breach of that covenant." 

To read the article, visit the OOGA website.