Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Oil And Gas Production topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Committee advances bill letting brine producers shift acreage between units under Oil and Gas Commission oversight
Summary
A Senate committee approved House Bill 1413, which allows brine producers to move acreage between production units for operational efficiency, subject to oversight and permission from the state Oil and Gas Commission; sponsors said the change will not reduce royalty payments to mineral owners.
The Senate Agriculture, Forestry & Economic Development Committee approved House Bill 1413, a measure to let brine producers reassign acreage between production units to improve operational efficiency while preserving mineral owners’ royalty rights.
Sponsor Matt Stone, State Senator (District 2), told the committee the bill would let producers “move acreage from 1 unit to the next for the sake of production efficiency” while keeping oversight with the Oil and Gas Commission. Stone said no acreage could be moved without the commission’s permission.
Mark Day, public relations and land manager at Linksys in El Dorado, described the company’s situation: “We have 3 bridal operating units. We have a west unit, a central unit, and a south unit.” Day said the company’s central unit is a roughly 40,000-acre unit that now has only three operating wells after decades of activity and about 20 supply wells plugged over 40 years. Day said the west unit has about 10–12 supply wells and a bromine-processing tower that could handle increased brine if water were routed from the central unit.
Day told the committee that moving acreage between units requires pipelines, rights of way and stakeholder coordination, and that the change is intended to increase production in the west unit while decreasing the central unit’s acreage. He said mineral owners would continue to receive bromine royalty payments, and that if lithium production is later established, mineral owners would receive separate lithium royalties: “Nothing’s gonna change. The mineralite owners will still continue to receive their, bronze royalty payment. And then when and when and the lithium, royalties established and there is lithium production, then there'll be an additional lithium payment for those mineralite owners.”
A committee member disclosed personal property interests in a lithium-designated area and asked whether the bill would change how property is designated or paid; the sponsor and Mark Day answered that the bill addresses the mechanism for moving acreage between units and does not itself reclassify mineral designations or automatically alter royalty types.
Stone moved to pass the bill; Senator Hickey seconded. The committee approved the measure by voice vote. The transcript records that no members of the public spoke for or against the bill during the committee hearing.
The bill places the Oil and Gas Commission in an oversight role; the transcript does not specify whether additional rulemaking, fiscal impact, or a timeline for commission review would follow committee passage.
