Tenneco Oil Co. v. District Court of Twentieth Judicial Dist., Carter County

• Citation: 465 P.2d 468
• Decision Date: 03 February 1970
• Docket Number: No. 43910,43910
• Parties: TENNECO OIL COMPANY, Operator of the North Tatums Godwin Sand Unit, Norville Oil Company, Rocket Oil Company, Cox-Alspaugh, David Beach, Kirkpatrick Oil Company, Teneco Oil Company, H. L. Gentry, Manly B. Brown, Jene Harper, Phillips Petroleum Co. and Kerr-MeGee Corporation, Petitioners, v. The DISTRICT COURT OF the TWENTIETH JUDICIAL DISTRICT sitting in Ardmore, CARTER COUNTY, Oklahoma, and James H. Dillard, Judge of said court, Respondents.
• Court: Supreme Court of Oklahoma

Page 468

465 P.2d 468

TENNECO OIL COMPANY, Operator of the North Tatums Godwin Sand Unit, Norville Oil Company, Rocket Oil Company Cox-Alspaugh, David Beach, Kirkpatrick Oil Company, Teneco Oil Company, H. L. Gentry, Manly B. Brown, Jene Harper Phillips Petroleum Co. and Kerr-MeGee Corporation, Petitioners, v. The DISTRICT COURT OF the TWENTIETH JUDICIAL DISTRICT sitting in Ardmore, CARTER COUNTY, Oklahoma, and James H. Dillard, Judge of said court Respondents.

No. 43910.

Supreme Court of Oklahoma.

Feb. 3, 1970.

Fischl, Culp & McMillin, Ardmore, for petitioners.

Ritter & McGuire,Ardmore, for respondents.

HODGES, Justice.

Petitioners seek in this original action a writ of prohibition against the respondent judge prohibiting him from exercising jurisdiction in a partition suit and for dissolution of a temporary injunction. The issue involved is the right of the trial court to partition oil and gas leases that have been previously unitized under an order of the Corporation Commission. We find the writ of prohibition should be granted.

In 1967, certain lease owners, including State Oil Company, hereinafter referred to as plaintiff, agreed to unitize their oil and gas leases. They submitted a Plan of Unitization to the Corporation Commission. The commission entered an order approving the Plan of Unitization and the North Tatums Goodwin Sand Unit was created. Tenneco Oil Company, one of the petitioners herein, was named operator of the Unit.

After approximately three years of operation, plaintiff filed an action in the district court of Carter County for partition of the oil and gas leases within the Unit. Subsequently, the trial court entered an order temporarily enjoining and restraining the operator of the Unit, Tenneco Oil Company, from engaging in an expansion of secondary recovery within the Unit until further order of the court. The petitioners have asked us to dissolve this injunction and to grant a writ prohibiting the trial court from exercising further jurisdiction in the partition suit.

Petitioners allege that plaintiff's partition suit is a collateral attack upon an order of the Corporation Commission. They contend that under our statutes no court, except the Supreme Court, and it only on appeal, has jurisdiction to review, reverse, annual, modify or correct any order of the commission or to enjoin or restrain its execution or operation.

Plaintiff, on the other hand, contends the partition suit does not interfere with the operation of the Unit, nor does it attempt to disturb the jurisdiction of the Corporation Commission in fixing correlative rights of the unitized leaseholders. They insist that when partition is allowed by the trial court, it will be partitioned subject to the unitized order of the Commission.

A prerequisite for partition is that there must be a cotenancy between the parties. 68 C.J.S. Partition § 1. In Prusa v. Cermak, Okl., 414 P.2d 297, we held in syllabus (1) 'Partition of real property may be had only when it is held in cotenancy, either as tenants in common, joint tenants or coparceners.' See also, North v. Coffey, 200 Okl. 44, 191 P.2d 220.

The question then to decide is whether the voluntary unitization agreement of the parties, which led to the creation of the Unit by the Corporation Commission and its order of approval, created a cotenancy between the several leaseholders. We find it did not.

In Wakefield v. State Okl., 306 P.2d 305, a contention was made that an order of the Corporation Commission pooling two mineral estates under a compulsory pooling statute created an 'enforced tenancy in common.' The court is rejecting this argument cited and quoted from Amis v. Bryan Petroleum Corp., 185 Okl. 206, 90 P.2d 936, where we said:

'The parties cannot successfully assert their common law rights as tenants in common, for such a tenancy actually does not exist.'

In Sinclair Crude Oil Co. v. Oklahoma Tax Commission, Okl., 326 P.2d 1051, some of the parties to a voluntary communization agreement were Cherokee allotees whose allotments were exempt from taxation. The tax commission assessed a gross production tax against the royalty they were entitled to receive. The assessment was made on the theory that the communitization agreement constituted an exchange of title and ownership to their mineral interest thus losing their tax exempt status as a...