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Danco appeals AOGCC, court decisions Appeals to Alaska Supreme Court, Alaska Superior Court in Juneau concern overriding royalty interests the parties held in state oil and gas leases Kristen Nelson PNA Editor-in-Chief
Dan Donkel and associated overriding royalty interest owners have appealed two recent decisions, one by the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission and one by the Alaska Superior Court.
The commission’s decision rejecting a petition for addition of a lease to the North Cook Inlet unit has been appealed to Alaska Superior Court in Juneau.
In the case appealed from a decision by the Department of Natural Resources at the North Middle Ground Shoal field, Donkel and others argued that the department incorrectly excluded a lease in which they held an overriding royalty interest from a gas participating area. After the case was remanded to DNR by the court for a hearing, the parties appealed the judge’s ruling. Supreme Court appeal Daniel Donkel, Robert Bolt and George Kasper appealed a decision by Superior Court Judge Sigurd Murphy, remanding a Department of Natural Resources decision on a gas participating area at the North Middle Ground Shoal field to DNR for a hearing.
In an April 4 appeal to the Alaska Supreme Court, attorney Douglas Mertz said the Superior Court “erred by failing to rule that the Department of Natural Resources had a mandatory duty to include lease ADL 369116 in a natural gas participating area after DNR concluded that the leasehold contained hydrocarbons capable of producing or contributing to production of hydrocarbons in paying quantities.”
In his March 4 decision, Murphy did not address whether the lease had hydrocarbons, but ruled that DNR’s regulations required it to “provide notice and hearing to all working interest, royalty and overriding royalty owners” before rejecting the participating area proposed by Unocal, operator of the North Middle Ground Shoal field, which included both ADL 17595 and ADL 369116.
DNR had provided opportunities for Unocal to present information, but had not included overriding royalty owners in those meetings. Commission ruling appealed Danco International Oil & Gas Inc., Danco Royalty Partnership Ltd., Monte J. Allen, Dr. George Kasper, Kasper Profitsharing, Kasper Family Partnership and the Estate of Dr. John A. Blume, have appealed the recent decision of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission to Alaska Superior Court in Juneau.
Appellants earlier appealed a ruling by the commission on the North Cook Inlet petition in Superior Court in Anchorage, but that appeal was made before the commission responded to an administrative appeal, and the Anchorage appeal was rejected by the court.
In the current appeal, filed March 11, appellants argue a number of points, including that the commission did not provide it access to “exploratory, seismic and related data held by Phillips Petroleum,” that the commission “failed to use independent legal counsel,” but instead was advised by the Department of Law and that the commission “erred by failing to reconvene the original February, 1997 hearing on Appellant’s petition and by applying, retroactively, statutes which were not in effect at the time the Appellant’s original petition was filed.”
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