Exploration and Development Agreements

The largest part of Ted’s practice consists of drafting and negotiating exploration and development agreements, as used in the onshore domestic oil and gas exploration industry, the offshore industry, and the international oil and gas industry. Because of the nature of the industry, it is difficult to characterize all types of agreements. A partial list would include: joint venture agreements, farmouts, farmins, participation agreements, bottom-hole, dry-hole and acreage contribution letters, joint operating agreements, master service agreements, oil and gas leases, production sharing contracts, concession agreements, drilling contracts, platform use contracts, group shoot agreements and bidding agreements, pipeline construction contracts, pipeline easements, and licensing agreements for seismic or other data. Frequently, these agreements require the drafting and negotiation of ancillary agreements to allow the parties to conduct the operations contemplated by the original agreements. By necessity, Ted is involved in the drafting and negotiating of confidentiality agreements, accounting procedures, easements, assignments, royalty and mineral deeds, bills of sale, compressor site agreements, master service agreements, consulting and employment agreements, construction contracts, time charter agreements, and bareboat and helicopter charter agreements.

Because so much of the legal framework of the oil and gas industry was created in the onshore regions of Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana, many of those instruments, and certainly the concepts, have been used as templates or models in the offshore and international oil and gas industry. A careful student of the antecedents of the joint operating agreement as used in the United States onshore industry will see that many of its aspects are in the operating agreements used by international companies throughout the world, as well as national oil companies seeking to do business with multi-nationals.