Loriaux v. Corporation Commission

• Decision Date: 25 September 1973
• Docket Number: No. 45406,45406
• Citation: 514 P.2d 941
• Court: Oklahoma Supreme Court
• Parties: Francis R. LORIAUX, Appellant, v. CORPORATION COMMISSION of the State of Oklahoma, Appellee.

Page 941

514 P.2d 941

Francis R. LORIAUX, Appellant, v. CORPORATION COMMISSION of the State of Oklahoma, Appellee.

No. 45406.

Supreme Court of Oklahoma.

Sept. 25, 1973.

Holliman, Maddux & Pierce by Jerry T. Pierce, Bartlesville, for appellant.

Nathan S. Sherman, Asst. Conservation Atty., Corp. Comm., Oklahoma City, for appellee.

BARNES, Justice:

This appeal evolves from proceedings instituted in this State's Corporation Commission (hereinafter referred to as 'Commission') during 1971, on the application of said Commission's Pollution Abatement Manager, for an order requiring Francis R. Loriaux (Appellant herein) to plug the allegedly abandoned oil and gas wells on two leases (hereinafter referred to as the 'Sherwood' and 'Koopman' leases) collectively covering a Nowata County quarter section of land.

Loriaux filed an answer denying he had abandoned the leases and averring that he had assigned them to one Hancock in September, 1968, under an agreement allowing said assignee to pull and abandon any of the leases' wells, and in which, as to any such wells, Hancock agreed to plug them in accord with the Commission's Rules and Regulations.

Thereafter, at a hearing on the matter before one of the Commission's Trial Examiners, evidence was adduced from Loriaux, Hancock, and others. Among other things, it was shown that none of the seventeen unplugged wells on the two leases was producing; that after the last sale of oil from the Koopman lease in January, 1965, the pipeline serving it was removed and that, after Rock Island Oil & Refining Company had quit transporting oil by truck from the Sherwood lease in November, 1966, no production had been obtained from it. Among other things, Loriaux testified that after this cessation of production, he had no intention of abandoning the wells, and 'would go over there about every two weeks and pump the water off the wells to try to keep them in good condition and not have the water flood out to the oil zones.' Loriaux also testified that he had been semi-retired since October, 1967, because he had double pneumonia and an operation on his leg that had gotten progressively worse and that his doctor then told him he couldn't do any work for at least two years and advised him to get out of the oil business.

Mr. Hancock testified that after he received his lease assignment from Loriaux in September, 1968, he conducted no operations to produce oil from the property, and in May, 1969, assigned it to one Lewis, who also did nothing of that sort, and is now dead.

After the close of the hearing, the Trial Examiner filed his written report recommending that the aforementioned application be granted. Thereafter, the Commission entered its report and order, in which it found that Loriaux, as owner and operator of the subject wells, had failed to comply with the Commission's Rule 601 pertaining to the plugging of...