Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Skip Peel - Mineral Consultant on November 18, 2010 at 7:51

La. Office of Conservation district offices can provide certified copies of well files. In the majority of cases a court requires certified copies of public documents. Certified title and conveyance docs come from a parish Clerk of Court and mineral documents come from the Office of Conservation.

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Permalink Reply by The_Baron on November 18, 2010 at 9:08

Just look at early photos of Pine Island and Kilgore, TX.

Thats why we have a LOC.

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Permalink Reply by The_Baron on November 18, 2010 at 9:07

If you were to file suit, you would do a records request from the defendant.

Also, you could supena records held by the state LOC and LDR. SONRIS is a great tool, but is prone to errors. The well files and production audit cards would be a more accurate sorce of data.

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Permalink Reply by FXEF on November 18, 2010 at 10:04

Henry,

LOC and RRC production data is reported to them by the operator..... so the operator is in control.

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Permalink Reply by The_Baron on November 18, 2010 at 11:21

Louisiana production is reported monthly. And I would say LOC is in control.

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Permalink Reply by Harold5011 on November 30, 2010 at 5:26

I'm not a lawyer, but I've seen a whole lot of monthly production data (that has been downloaded directly from the Conservatin website) get into evidence in numerous suits without any problem (by vaious experts), both in federal and state courts. The methodolgy of generating it may be the subject of questions during depositions, but I've not seen it thrown out by anty court. I once saw an order that had a color attachment get thrown out because it referred to a color exhibit but the color exhibit was in black and white.

As to production data, could you give the the Louisiana law that states that Conservation database is not admissible into evidence in Louisiana state courts or in the US court of claims as to Louisiana metters?

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Permalink Reply by Skip Peel - Mineral Consultant on November 30, 2010 at 9:54

SONRIS Main Page Disclaimer (it's in blue at the bottom of the page).

The information on this Web site has been carefully prepared from the best available sources of data. It is intended for general informational purposes only and should not be considered authoritative for navigational, engineering, other site-specific uses, or any other uses. The Louisiana Department of Natural Resources (DNR) does not warrant or guarantee its accuracy, nor does DNR assume any responsibility or liability for any reliance thereon.

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Permalink Reply by The_Baron on November 30, 2010 at 10:27

Harold:

of course Sonris data could be used as evidence in court. If the data was disputed that would be made in argumants before the court. Verification of data would be take place during discovery through interogrtories, document and information requests, and depositions.

As Skip points out, DNR does not warrant their data. Personally I beilieve this is to insulate them from claims as typos and errors do occur. Also, when operators file amended production forms, sometimes the changes are not reflected accuratly on SONRIS.

All that being said, Sonris is the resource available to most, and unit production is usually all that is needed to verify you are being paid on the correct volume. To some of us, we are lucky enough to have PI Dwights. As profesionals we use PI Dwights to study potential new prospects, study resevoir characteristics, and so on. It also has a good bit of data on salt water production.

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Permalink Reply by Harold5011 on December 1, 2010 at 6:25

Then it is admissible, just not necessarily all that accurate. However, if a monthly reporting statement is falsified, the perpetrator can get up to two years in prison (that at least gives you something to hang your hat on as to conservation's production data when your before a judge. A lot of Louisiana operators once used the Texas standard to calculate gas in Louisiana, and that really messed up the payment of severance taxes. There was a time, and I remember it well, when a landman could never be sure if gas used in operations was included in what was reported to conservation or not. Even now, I've found that if you rely on the companies to furnish the data (especially when there's a lot of condensation and/or whenever there is a gasoline plant tailgate involved), there are only a few specialized engineers in the world who can tell you what the production is, and none of them work for the state. Commingling can also make company production data practically impossible to make sense of. Split stream company production data, especially those with moving or equalizing formula's) also can give experienced oil and gas accountants fits. And in any case, your never really sure which of the meters companies are really using to pay severance taxes on, but you usually know the one they should be using. Sometimes, when there are numerous wells reported under a single LUW code, I'm not aware of a sure-fire way of finding or calculating the monthly production for any particular well other than going to the operator or using the test data to apportion as best you can.

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