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The History of Mexican Oil and Gas Law from the Conquistadors’ Conquest Until 1914*

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The History of Mexican Oil and Gas Law from the Conquistadors’ Conquest Until 1914* Columns Features The History of Mexican Oil and Gas Law Letter from the President Busted: A History of Bankruptcy and from the Conquistadors’ Conquest By Ben L. Mesches Insolvency in the Oil and Gas Industry until 1914 As we begin 2016, the By Vincent R. Ryan, Jr. By Charles A. Beckham, Jr. Society remains focused By 1921, Mexico was Today, technological on our core mission: the second leading improvements have put preserving the history petroleum-producing oil and gas production of the Supreme Court of nation of the world. at an all-time high, while Texas. Read more... Ben L. Mesches Read more... prices have approached Mexican President a decade low. Porfirio Diaz Read more... Sale of surplus oil Executive Director’s Page & gas equipment Theodora Hemphill’s Guide to the By Pat Nester Texas Constitution, Part 1I Meet the new archivist How Texas Law Promoted of the State Bar, who will By David A. Furlow be helping the Society Shale Play Development The older daughter of Texas Supreme Court with its document- and By Bill Kroger, Jason Newman, Chief Justice John artifact-preservation Ben Sweet, and Justin Lipe Hemphill offers a unique projects. Read more... Pat Nester The production of oil perspective on the way and gas from shale plays Texas’s constitutions in the past ten years, Studio portrait, shape and reshape lives. much of it in Texas, unidentifed Fellows Column Read more... woman, 1870’s has transformed the By David J. Beck economies of the world. The Society’s new Read more... A Spindletop oil judicial civics and history field gusher, 1903 Unraveling a Mystery: Who Was Texas’s book is the first of its kind in the country. First African-American Attorney? Read more... David J. Beck The Texas Railroad Commission By John G. Browning and —The First OPEC Chief Justice Carolyn Wright Our research sheds By Mitchell E. Ayer light on the two likeliest Executive Editor’s Page The Commission played candidates for the title of By David A. Furlow the central role in Texas’s first black lawyer: This Journal chronicles interstate production W. A. Price and A. W. the boom and bust coordination for forty Wilder. Read more... reversals of Texas law years from 1933 through A. W. Wilder that resulted from the 1972. Read more... Seal of the development of oil and Commission gas production. Read more... David A. Furlow News & Announcements Jim Haley Shares Supreme Court Update: Texas State Library and Stories at the GLO Save Texas History Archives’ Texas Digital Archive In Memoriam: Symposium Continues to Grow Joseph D. Jamail, Jr., 1925-2015 By David A. Furlow By David A. Furlow By Marilyn P. Duncan The Society’s historian TSLAC invites its “virtual The Society lost one wowed a crowd with visitors” to explore their of its most enduring colorful stories at the heritage through its friends and supporters Texas General Land “Places Collection” and on December 23 of last Office’s fifth annual “People Collection.” Jim Haley year. Read more... A photo from the symposium. Read more... at podium Read more... Joe Jamail, Jr. Places Collection Beck Recognized for Lifetime of Fall 2015 Board Meeting Featured a Talk Excellence in Advocacy by Dr. Frank de la Teja and Tour of the The Houston Bar Association Teach By Charles B. McFarland Texas Committee Seeks Volunteers to The Texas Association of Texas State Cemetery Civil Trial and Appellate By David A. Furlow Teach the Taming Texas Project Specialists named The meeting was By Warren W. Harris David J. Beck as the filled with special The HBA is seeking 2015 recipient of its presentations and good volunteers from its Lifetime of Excellence in news about Society ranks to teach middle- David Beck projects. Read more... schoolers lessons from Advocacy Award. in his youth Dr. Frank de la Read more... Teja the Society’s new book . Read more... What Wings They Were: Supreme Court Establishes Texas The Case of Emeline Commission to Expand Civil Services By Laura Gibson Membership & More By Dylan O. Drummond In 1847, the histories The new commission is charged with of the Houston Bar Calendar of Events exploring ways to bring more affordable Association, Baker Botts, Officers, Trustees & Court Liaison legal services to small businesses and and a free woman of people who cannot qualify for legal aid. color named Emeline 2015-16 Membership Upgrades Read more... became forever Emeline’s lawyer, intertwined. Read more... Peter Gray 2015-16 New Member List Join the Society Texas History Podcasts Offer This March, the Society Examines Listeners Another Great Way to Visit the Society on Twitter and Facebook! the Restatement and Reformation Learn about Texas’s Past @SCOTXHistSocy of Texas Law By Dylan O. Drummond FB: Texas Supreme Court Historical Society Texas legal historians By David A. Furlow now have two great The Society will present © 2016 Texas Supreme Court Historical Society resources to learn a prestigious panel more about Texas’s rich program during the history and legal lineage. Texas State Historical Read more... Association’s Annual Meeting. Read more... TSHA logo Executive Editor’s Column Oil and Gas: A Giant Impact on Texas Law David A. Furlow “ his, then, is Texas, the giant land I love….” The theme song of director George TStevens’s 1956 epic, Giant, tells you everything you need to know about the impact of oil and gas on Texas law. Early on, Rock Hudson’s character Jordan “Bick” Benedict, a wealthy Texas rancher and landowner, ventures east to a columned plantation in Virginia to woo Elizabeth Taylor’s spirited, fox-hunting character Leslie Lynnton. Intrigued, Leslie stays up reading about the Lone Star State. The next morning, she challenges Bick’s Texas braggadocio: “We really stole Texas, didn’t we, Mr. Benedict? From the Mexicans.” Not an auspicious beginning. “You’re catching me early in the morning to start joking, Miss Leslie.” But Leslie is not joking. Exasperated, Bick replies, I’ve never heard anything as ignorant as some eastern people. You all think that the glory happened here in the East, don’t you, with Valley Forge and Bunker Hill? Do you know about San Jacinto? Have you heard about the Alamo? “Why certainly,” she replies. “I read all about them last night.” Well, Bick, Leslie will learn plenty soon Bill Gold, U.S. theatrical poster for the film Giant (1956). about the Alamo and San Jacinto after she https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_(1956_ marries you and moves to Texas. But it will take film)#/media/File:Giant_Poster.gif 7 James Dean’s character Jett Renk, an up-from-nothin’ wildcatter, to show you how oil, black gold, Texas tea, transforms the world: Everybody thought I had a duster. Y’all thought ol’ Spindletop Burke and Burnett was all the oil there was, didn’t ya? Well, I’m here to tell you that it ain’t, boy! . My well came in big, so big, Bick and there’s more down there and there’s bigger wells. I’m rich, Bick. I’m a rich ‘un. I’m a rich boy. Me, I’m gonna have more money than you ever thought you could have – you and all the rest of you stinkin’ sons of ... Benedicts! As Chill Will’s stereotypically Texas character Uncle Bawley explains, “Bick, you shoulda shot that fella a long time ago. Now he’s too rich to kill.” In this issue, our Journal chronicles the dramatic boom and bust reversals of Texas law that resulted from the development of oil and gas production in the twentieth century and the twenty-first century’s fracking revolution. This history begins with natural history, when ancient oceans covered Texas, then turned into vast primordial swamps that nurtured dinosaurs until an enormous asteroid hit the Yucatan Peninsula and ended the age of dinosaurs. Sixty-five million years later, new giants walked the land: oilmen, wildcatters, the Seven Sisters of Oil, the lawyers who sued them, the advocates who defended them, and the judges and justices who resolved their earth-shaking disputes. Texas state court judges shaped a new landscape of oil and gas law. The resulting jurisprudence inspired other states’ hydrocarbon law, profoundly influenced federal legislation and case law, and transformed the world economy. Bill Kroger, Jason Newman, Ben Sweet, and Justin Lipe’s article “How Texas Law Promoted Shale Play Development” describes how Texas’s uniquely pro-business legal environment, the law of capture, private ownership of land, and Texas legal doctrines nurtured the fracking revolution that is reshaping international economics and politics to this day. That revolution has not only led Congress to lift its decades-long ban on the exportation of Texas crude, it has also made many a wildcatter into a “rich un” Giant’s Jett Renk would envy. In “Busted: A History of Bankruptcy and Insolvency in the Oil and Gas Industry,” creditors’ rights and bankruptcy attorney Charles A. Beckham, Jr. shows the way Texas law evolved in response to the roller-coaster ride oil and gas prices have brought to the Texas economy. Mr. Beckham’s history begins when Lyne T. Barret drills the first productive oil well 1866 Nacogdoches County, proceeds through the Corsicana, Spindletop, and Luling production peaks, perilous price-hikes, and terrifyingly steep declines to arrive at twenty-first century bankruptcy reforms, production-hedging, and court-ordered auctions of oil and gas equipment. If you want to know why the Benedicts began drilling wells rather than running so many cattle, this article will ‘splain things. Harris County Attorney Vince Ryan traces this boom and bust cycle all the way back to its origin when he examines how American Indians, Aztecs, and Spanish padres exploited chapapote oil from natural seeps.
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