Title: MINGO OIL PRODUCERS, A Wyoming Corporation and NUPETCO ASSOCIATES, A Utah Limited Partnership v. KAMP CATTLE COMPANY, A Wyoming Corporation

State: wyoming

Issuer: Wyoming Supreme Court

Document:

MINGO OIL PRODUCERS, A Wyoming Corporation and NUPETCO ASSOCIATES, A Utah Limited Partnership v. KAMP CATTLE COMPANY, A Wyoming Corporation1989 WY 141776 P.2d 736Case Number: 88-322Decided: 06/29/1989Supreme Court of Wyoming
MINGO OIL 
PRODUCERS, A WYOMING CORPORATION AND NUPETCO ASSOCIATES, A UTAH LIMITED 
PARTNERSHIP, APPELLANTS (PLAINTIFFS),

v.

KAMP CATTLE 
COMPANY, A WYOMING CORPORATION, APPELLEE 
(DEFENDANT).

K.W. Keldsen, Rawlins, for 
appellants (plaintiffs).

Kermit C. Brown and William L. Hiser of Brown & Erickson, Rawlins, for appellee 
(defendant).

Before CARDINE, C.J., and THOMAS, 
URBIGKIT, MACY and GOLDEN, JJ.

URBIGKIT, 
Justice.

[¶1.]     We consider an oil 
lease right-of-entry controversy complicated by a subsequent dollar payment 
modification agreement as an annual land use rental for access roads and well 
sites. Mingo Oil Producers (Mingo Oil), lessee, denied access to the leasehold 
"to conduct its oil and gas production, exploration and drilling operations," 
sued Kamp Cattle Company (Kamp Cattle), surface landowner, to establish access 
and recover damages. We reverse the judgment entered in favor of the 
landowner.

FACTS

[¶2.]     Although this case 
started with two typical standard form oil and gas leases (Producers 88 style), 
the factual developments thereafter become complicated.1 Kamp Cattle, appellee, owned the 
surface and a fifty percent mineral estate. It and the other mineral interest 
owner had executed the base leases in 1979 to another entity, which leasehold 
rights were more recently acquired by Mingo Oil, appellant. Upon receipt of the 
assignment of the oil and gas leases in March 1984, Mingo Oil attempted to enter 
on the premises for production resumption and pumping operation and was 
immediately denied access by Kamp Cattle. Thereafter in April 1985, a written 
surface owner's access agreement was first executed, which provided in 
part:

1. Kamp 
agrees to allow Mingo to operate the existing oil and gas wells and to drill for 
oil on that certain land owned by Kamp. Said land is designated as 
follows:

All of 
Section 18, excluding Lot 4, in Township 20 North Range 83 West of the 6th P.M., 
in Carbon County, Wyoming.

2. Mingo 
agrees that during the production and prior to drilling on said land, it will 
build and maintain proper fences, which will include gates rather than cattle 
guards, on areas of ingress and site location in order to protect Kamp's 
cattle.

3. Mingo 
agrees to promptly level, reclaim and reseed said drilling site at the 
termination of drilling. Said leveling[,] reclaiming and reseeding to be done by 
Mingo to the reasonable specifications as required by 
Kamp.

4. At the 
time drilling is commenced, or production recommenced, Mingo shall pay to the 
Kamp people the sum of $400.00 per acre per year for actual surface used to 
include a minimum of one acre per production site and roads to and from 
production sites.

5. In the 
event oil and/or gas is discovered[,] Mingo agrees to pay a surface lease of 
$400.00 per acre per year for actual surface used, to include a minimum of one 
acre per production site and roads (a minimum of twelve feet in width) to 
production sites. This payment to be made until such time as the 12 1/2% mineral 
owners royalty equals or exceeds such lease payment for said production 
site.

6. Mingo 
agrees to keep all locations free from trash and to construct a pit for that 
purpose.

7. Mingo 
will post a surety bond equal to $400.00 per year per acre used as determined by 
a registered surveyor to insure the payment of the yearly rental provided for 
hereunder. Upon the execution of this agreement, Mingo will post a $10,000.00 
bond as an interim measure pending the completion of the survey which will be 
released upon the posting of the final bond.

[¶3.]     Unfortunately, Mingo 
Oil was unable to secure the required bond and Kamp Cattle denied its 
alternative proposal to substitute a letter of credit. Thus, after about one 
month of occupancy, Mingo Oil was again ordered off the land in June 1985, until 
another agreement, as a supplemental agreement dated September 11, 1985, was 
executed which creates the documentary questions now 
presented:

WHEREAS, on 
April 15, 1985, Kamp and Mingo entered into surface owner's agreement whereby 
Mingo was given the right to enter upon and conduct exploration and drilling 
operations for oil and gas on the hereinafter described land of Kamp and whereby 
Mingo agreed to pay to Kamp the sum of $400.00 per acre per year for actual 
surface used to include a minimum of one acre per production site and roads to 
and from production site; said land being described as Section 18, excluding Lot 
4, in Township 20 North, Range 83 West of the 6th P.M., in Carbon County, 
Wyoming; and

WHEREAS, 
Mingo and Kamp have agreed in the event that there is production of oil or gas 
on said properties and royalties payable to Kamp that Mingo shall be reimbursed 
for surface rentals paid out of royalties payable to Kamp; 
and

WHEREAS, 
Kamp desires that the surface use payments due to Kamp be payable in advance[] 
based upon an estimate of acreage of land anticipated to be used and Mingo is 
willing to make such advance payment; and 

WHEREAS, it 
is anticipated that the total acreage used for roads and site locations will be 
17.816 acres, which, at $400.00 per acre, computes to the amount of $7,126.40 
for a one year period; and

WHEREAS, 
Mingo has been allowed access to and upon the aforesaid property only one month 
since April 15, 1985, and since that time has been denied access to and upon 
said property and the advance payment of this rental will be for one month 
already used and 11 months after the execution of this Supplemental Agreement; 
and

WHEREAS, 
Kamp has agreed to give to Mingo an Assignment of Oil and Gas Royalty payments 
due to Kamp from Sinclair Oil Co. up to $7,126.40.

NOW, 
THEREFORE, in consideration of the covenants and agreements hereinafter to be 
kept by the parties hereto, it is mutually agreed as 
follows:

1. That upon 
the execution and delivery of this Supplemental Agreement, Mingo shall pay to 
Kamp the sum of $7,126.40 advance payment of surface use rentals for a period of 
one year actual use of the hereinabove described real 
property.

2. Kamp 
hereby grants to Mingo the right to enter upon the above-described land of Kamp to explore and drill for oil and gas 
in accordance with the previous agreement of the 
parties.

3. Kamp 
shall give to Mingo a good and sufficient assignment of all of his oil and gas 
royalty payments due to Kamp from oil and gas produced and sold from said 
property addressed to Sinclair Oil Corporation, 550 East South Temple, P.O. Box 
31825, Salt Lake City, Utah 84131, or any other purchaser of oil and gas 
products produced from said lands, up to, but not exceeding the sum of $7,126.40 
out of the first production of oil and gas from said 
land.

4. At the 
end of twelve months of actual use of said lands Mingo and Kamp will have an 
accounting of acreage actually used for said period of time and the amounts due 
for such use under the previous agreement between the parties and the 
appropriate payment or reimbursement will be made.

Pursuant to these agreement terms, Kamp Cattle was paid $7,126.40 and 
apparently executed an assignment of royalty interest so that its royalty 
rights, from whatever production, would be paid to Mingo Oil for damage deposit 
credit.

[¶4.]     In February 1987, Kamp 
Cattle again evicted Mingo Oil from the premises by written letter reciting 
failure to account for additional acreage during the initial one year and 
failure to make arrangements thereafter for a continuing second year payment. 
This lawsuit followed by Mingo Oil to seek both right of future access and 
damage from loss of discontinued production since February 
1987.

ISSUE

[¶5.]     Mingo Oil phrases its 
appellate issue based on a denied right of access provided by the terms of the 
original leases. Kamp Cattle responds in questioning whether the oil and gas 
leases are still in effect and, if so, whether the two modification agreements 
were binding on Mingo Oil as controlling in utilization of access for 
production.

DISCUSSION

[¶6.]     The trial court did not 
receive evidence, consider or decide whether the leases remained in effect and, 
in the absence of any decision by the trial court, we will not pursue that 
controversy here.2 The finite decision made by the 
trial court was that the two access agreements "extended beyond the one-year 
period and controlled the actions of the parties beyond the one-year provision 
set forth in the supplemental agreement. " We do not agree and consequently 
reverse.

[¶7.]     In order to reach that 
conclusion, an understanding of the status of the parties is required. In 
original terms of the oil and gas lease, Mingo Oil is granted on the described 
property an unqualified right of access for

the purpose 
of investigating, exploring, prospecting, drilling and mining for and producing 
oil, gas, casinghead gas and all other minerals (but not gravel), laying pipe 
lines, building tanks, power stations, telephone lines and other structures 
thereon to produce, save, take care of, treat, transport, and own said products, 
and housing its employees, * * *.

The 
reserved or retained right for Kamp Cattle was that "Lessee shall pay for 
damages caused by its operations * * * on said 
land."

[¶8.]     The argument that Kamp 
Cattle can force an access damage agreement before granting an initial right of 
access under the lease has a significant history in litigation. The 
countervailing contention that such a "forced agreement" is without 
consideration is also not novel. In order to establish the confines within which 
an analysis of the access agreement can properly be made, we determine that (1) 
Kamp Cattle cannot require the execution of agreement before access is 
permitted;3 and (2) the validity of any access 
agreement, executed for whatever reason, goodwill, liquidation of damage amount, 
avoidance of litigation or otherwise, need not and will not be decided in this 
decision.4 

[¶9.]     We need not reach 
beyond what the parties attempted to accomplish by the access agreement. In 
obvious effort to quantify and liquidate the access damage rights, the two 
agreements were willingly executed. Since we hold that the right of access was 
primary and fundamental, we will not extend a liquidating damage provision 
beyond its specified term of one year. Differing from the trial court, we do not 
find that any provision of the supplemental agreement defining surface use 
rental and lease right damage extends beyond that 
period.

[¶10.]  When Mingo Oil was unable to post the 
surety bond as required by the April 1985 agreement and Kamp Cattle was 
unwilling to accept the letter of credit as a substitute, the first agreement 
ended by notice and Kamp Cattle's exclusion of Mingo Oil from its operation of 
the oil field property. The access agreement was reinstated by the September 11, 
1985 amendment, but only for the one-year period. Without any agreement, Mingo 
Oil already had the right, as a function of its dominant estate, to possession 
provided by the oil and gas lease.5

[¶11.]  The dominant structure of rights provided 
for exploration, development and production under oil and gas leases is abraded 
by the surface owner's right to have reasonable use exercised and to recover for 
lease provided damages. This matter has been the subject for substantial 
litigation and extensive scholarly review in text and law journals. In general 
principle, the attributory status rests with the holder of the mineral estate in 
a priority right to develop and a correlative obligation derived from both 
precedent and lease contract to be reasonable in use and respond in damages as 
defined by that contract or required within tort law concepts.6 Sanford v. Arjay Oil Co., 686 P.2d 566 (Wyo. 1984); Holbrook v. Continental Oil Co., 73 Wyo. 321, 278 P.2d 798 (1955); Kinney-Coastal Oil Co. v. 
Kieffer, 277 U.S. 488, 48 S. Ct. 580, 72 L. Ed. 961 
(1928).

[¶12.]  A widely quoted and delightfully 
realistic and perspicacious analysis of the status of surface owner versus 
mineral-right lessee is provided by now United States District Judge Clarence A. 
Brimmer in The Rancher's Subservient Surface Estate, V Land & Water L.Rev. 
49 (1970).7 See also other Wyoming law reviews: 
Thompson, Surface Damages - Claims by Surface Estate Owner Against Mineral 
Estate Owner, 14 Wyo.L.J. 99 (1960) and Note, Surface Damage Under a Federal Oil 
and Gas Lease, 11 Wyo.L.J. 116 (1957).

[¶13.]  The case law is reasonably consistent 
with a degree of shading from Texas which follows a heavy persuasion 
favoring the lessee to other jurisdictions where a somewhat more liberalized 
adaptation for the surface owner might be perceived. The rule, however, remains 
constant in theory of law and lease document interpretation that the mineral 
estate is dominant. One of the early foundational cases came from the Wyoming 
Salt Creek oil field and ended in the United States Supreme Court in 
Kinney-Coastal Oil Co., 277 U.S. 488, 48 S. Ct. 580, 72 L. Ed. 961. In that case, 
lessee was granted an injunction to prevent occupancy and use of the surface for 
a townsite until oil and gas production had been completed. Well spacing was not 
then in existence.8 Sussex Land & Live Stock Co. v. 
Midwest Refining Co., 294 F. 597 (8th Cir. 1923) similarly involved lessee 
conflict with surface owner and claimed surface damage in the 
area.

[¶14.]  This court has had a minimum of appellate 
litigation, but the dominance of the mineral estate is determined. Sanford, 686 P.2d 566; Holbrook, 278 P.2d 798. See also Vest v. Exxon Corp., 752 F.2d 959 
(5th Cir. 1985); Monfort v. Layton, 1 Kan. App. 2d 622, 571 P.2d 80 (1977); Pure Oil Co. v. 
Gear, 183 Okla. 489, 83 P.2d 389 (1938); and 
Marland Oil Co. of Oklahoma v. Hubbard, 168 Okla. 518, 34 P.2d 278 (1934). Cf. Fowler v. 
Delaplain, 79 Ohio 
St. 279, 87 N.E. 260 
(1909).

[¶15.]  We stated in Sanford, 686 P.2d  at 572, 
that:

Under the 
rule of reasonable necessity, a mineral lessee is entitled to possess that 
portion of the surface estate "reasonably necessary" to the production and 
storage of the mineral:

"* * * `The 
true rule is that under the ordinary oil and gas lease, the lessee, in 
developing the premises in the production of oil and gas, is entitled to the 
possession and use of all that part of the leased premises which is reasonably 
necessary in producing and saving the oil and gas. This extends to space 
required upon which to erect tanks or dig pits necessary to store or confine 
such refuse matter as may come from the wells on the leased premises in the 
course of ordinary prudent operations. * * *'" Pure Oil Co. v. Gear, 183 Okla. 489, 83 P.2d 389, 392 (1938), quoting 
from Magnolia Petroleum Co. v. Howard, 182 Okla. 101, 77 P.2d 18, 20 
(1938).

The 
surface subservient estate status was amplified in Holbrook as interpreting the 
federal lease. The Texas rule has been somewhat variously stated 
but consistently applied to favor the dominance of the lessee 
interests:

It is 
elementary that the mineral lessee, insofar as the surface of land is concerned, 
possesses the dominant estate, and the lessor, or surface owner, has the 
servient estate. The mineral lessee, as the owner of the dominant estate, has 
the right to the use and possession of so much of the surface as is reasonably 
required in the operation of his mineral lease. * * * The rule of dual 
possession - i.e., that the mineral lessee is entitled to use so much of the 
leased premises as is required in its lease operations reasonably necessary for 
development and exploration, and that the surface owner has the right to use the 
portion of the surface not so required by the mineral lessee - does not apply 
where the rights of the parties are in conflict.

Getty Oil Company v. Royal, 422 S.W.2d 591, 593 (Tex. App. 1967). See 
likewise Ball v. Dillard, 602 S.W.2d 521 (Tex. 
1980); Getty Oil Company v. Jones, 470 S.W.2d 618 (Tex. 1971); Humble Oil and Refining Company v. Williams, 
420 S.W.2d 133 (Tex. 1967); Brown v. Lundell, 
344 S.W.2d 863 (Tex. 1961); and Warren 
Petroleum Corp. v. Martin, 153 Tex. 465, 271 S.W.2d 410 (1954). The quoted 
Texas rule is not essentially different from 
developed Wyoming law. Obviously, the damage provision 
presented here is significantly broader when compared to leases where damage is 
limited "to growing crops."9

[¶16.]  Mingo Oil, as long as a valid lease 
exists, has a right of occupancy of the surface for development and production, 
and Kamp Cattle retains a right to be repaid for damages 
caused.

[¶17.]  We reverse and remand for further 
proceedings in conformity herewith.

FOOTNOTES

1 The lease 
provided as right to access that Kamp Cattle

grants, 
leases and lets exclusively unto lessee for the purpose of investigating, 
exploring, prospecting, drilling and mining for and producing oil, gas, 
casinghead gas, and all other minerals (but not gravel), laying pipe lines, 
building tanks, power stations, telephone lines and other structures thereon to 
produce, save, take care of, treat, transport, and own said products, and 
housing its employees, [for the lands described in the 
lease].

Additionally, one of the two oil and gas leases in question contained a 
one sentence provision regarding surface damages, which stated that "Lessee 
shall pay for damages caused by its operations to growing crops on said 
land." The other lessor, lacking surface interest, did not have the three words 
deleted. At the time of acquisition by the present lessee, the leases involved a 
developed oil field (Overland Dome Oil Field). The original 1979 leases had a 
two-and-one-half-year delay rental term. Mingo Oil acquired the field from a 
bankruptcy sale. The file reflects that similar surface agreements as were 
subsequently executed with Mingo Oil may have existed with predecessor 
developers. At the time of this litigation, it is indicated that a field 
production, when operational, of between seventy and one hundred barrels per 
month existed. Photographs of the tanks and drilling equipment suggest a long 
period of disuse or neglect. This was obviously a marginal oil production 
property.

2 It is 
obvious that if the leases are in effect, they are held by production. Clearly, 
production has not occurred during the period of time when Mingo Oil has been 
denied access. Assuming for the purpose of this appeal, the leases remain in 
effect or, otherwise, nothing exists to litigate. Kamp Cattle had no direct 
knowledge of production since its royalty interest had been assigned by the 
modification agreement. Evidence of production was provided at trial for the 
period when access had been permitted.

3 
Representative analysis covering contract and tort and the do's and don'ts from 
the perspective of both mineral estate and surface owner include: Bennett, 
Damages to the Landowner Following the Oil and Gas Lease, 13 S.D.L.Rev. 29 
(1968); Browder, The Dominant Oil and Gas Estate - Master or Servant of the 
Servient Estate, 17 S.W.L.J. 25 (1963); Castleberry, Protecting the Oil and Gas 
Lessor, 30 Rocky Mtn.L.Rev. 441 (1958); Davis, Selected Problems Regarding Lessee's 
Rights and Obligations to the Surface Owner, 8 Rocky Mtn.Min.L.Inst. 315 (1963); 
Dye, Special Problems of the Farmer as an Oil and Gas Lessor, 11 Kansas L.Rev. 343 (1963); 
Healy, Rights of Mineral Owners in Surface, 1 Rocky Mtn.Min.L.Inst. 85 (1955); 
Jones, The Oil Operator and Surface Damages, 4 Nat. Resources Law. 339 (1971); 
Keeton and Jones, Tort Liability and the Oil and Gas Industry II, 39 Tex.L.Rev. 
253 (1961); Keeton and Jones, Tort Liability and the Oil and Gas Industry, 35 
Tex.L.Rev. 1 (1956); Lambert, Surface Rights of the Oil and Gas Lessee, 11 
Okla.L.Rev. 373 (1958); Moses, Peaceful Coexistence Between Lessor and Lessee 
Under an Oil and Gas Lease, 38 Tul.L.Rev. 341 (1964); Scott, Oil and Gas Lease 
Clauses Relating to Surface Damage and Use of the Surface, 13 Rocky 
Mtn.Min.L.Inst. 317 (1967); Sellers, How Dominant is the Dominant Estate? Or, 
Surface Damages Revisited, 13 Inst. on Oil & Gas L. & Tax'n 377 (1962); 
Comment, Land Uses Permitted an Oil and Gas Lessee, 37 Tex.L.Rev. 889 (1959); 
and Recent Decision, Oil and Gas - Rights of Surface and Mineral Owners, 7 
Baylor L.Rev. 188 (1955). See also Annotation, What Constitutes Reasonably 
Necessary Use of the Surface of the Leasehold by a Mineral Owner, Lessee, or 
Driller Under an Oil and Gas Lease or Drilling Contract, 53 A.L.R.3d 16 (1973) 
and cases and other annotations cited therein.

4 The 
validity of the forced agreement for access has encountered a varied response. 
Legitimate authority has rejected the effectiveness of such agreements on basis 
of lack of consideration and statute of frauds. See Phillips Petroleum Co. v. 
Cargill, 340 S.W.2d 877 (Tex. App. 1960); Miami 
Petroleum Co. v. Neal, 333 S.W.2d 876 (Tex. 
App. 1960); and Chapapas v. Delhi-Taylor Oil Corp., 323 S.W.2d 64 (Tex. App. 1959). Cf. 
Black Gold Petroleum Co. v. Hill, 188 Okla. 329, 108 P.2d 784 (1940) (invalidate the 
intended agreement for lack of consideration) and Union Producing Company v. 
Allen, 297 S.W.2d 867 (Tex. App. 1957). As similar in result, see Livingston v. Indian Territory Illuminating Oil Co., 91 F.2d 833 (10th Cir. 1937). Countervailing authority can also be found which 
tends to validate the agreement in the modern conception of compromise and 
settlement: Smith v. Minneapolis Threshing Mach. Co., 89 Okla. 156, 214 P. 178 (1923); State ex rel. West v. City 
of Sapulpa, 160 P. 489 (Okla. 1916) and 15A 
C.J.S. Compromise and Settlement § 11 at 202 
(1967).

We will not 
invade this broad and pervasive field of accord and satisfaction, compromise and 
settlement by virtue of the decision which we make, which renders the question 
of initial validity of the agreement unnecessary for present disposition of this 
appeal. See Willard Given & Associates, P.C. v. First Wyoming Bank-East 
Cheyenne, 706 P.2d 247 (Wyo. 1985); Greaser v. 
Williams, 703 P.2d 327 (Wyo. 1985); Miller v. 
Miller, 664 P.2d 39 (Wyo. 1983); Dame v. 
Mileski, 80 Wyo. 156, 340 P.2d 205 (1959); 
Casper Nat. Bank v. Woodin, 68 Wyo. 232, 232 P.2d 706 (1951); and City of Rawlins v. 
Jungquist, 16 Wyo. 403, 94 P. 464 
(1907).

5 Although we 
obviously will not determine the issue in this case, it appears that the rights 
of Kamp Cattle, if the access agreement was both valid and continuing, could 
have been only to sue for the agreed annual liquidated damages and not to deny 
Mingo Oil access. Neither litigant briefed this question which would require 
analysis of the leases as well as successive documents. Did Mingo Oil in access 
agreements bargain away its lease established rights for access as the holder of 
the dominant estate unless it paid annual "rental" or did it agree to make 
stated payments in lieu of damage claims?

6 Judge T. 
Blake Kennedy of the United States District Court for Wyoming stated in an unreported Wyoming 
case:

"This is a 
case in which it appears that it is not so much a controversy between wrong and 
right as it is between two rights. Plaintiffs had the right to have the 
protection of their surface of which they were the owners against unnecessary 
damage to those rights by the defendant in carrying on its oil operations. On 
the other hand, the defendant undoubtedly had the right to enter upon the land, 
using reasonable means to exploit its mineral 
possibilities."

Healy, supra n. 3, 1 Rocky Mtn. Min.L.Inst. at 101-02 (quoting Livingston v. The Texas Co., Unreported (D.C.Wyo. 
1951)).

7 Judge 
Brimmer's conceptualization provides definition for the surface owner 
conflicts:

Ranchers and 
farmers - almost by definition, if not by some obscure oath of allegiance to the 
local county farm bureau - have a sure and certain faith that a printed form 
entitled "Producers 88" is a timer-tested, honorable document that almost any 
prudent person would quickly sign on the tailgate of the pickup, in the hope 
that either development will lead to the pot at the end of the rainbow or that 
at least the annual lease rentals will defray the taxes. All too seldom is the 
family lawyer asked to participate in the negotiation of the oil lease, and 
frequently he only learns of his client's problems when the lessee's development 
has started and his client now tells him that a big well-site is in the middle 
of his best field, staked out by engineers, not farmers, in the dead of winter, 
taking far more land than reasonably required, that the newly constructed roads 
for heavy equipment are dividing the field so that the mowers will have trouble, 
that the roads will create low spots in which water will collect and sour the 
meadows, and will alter his irrigation pattern, that the culverts in the road 
will plug and necessitate annual cleaning, that the surface water where confined 
by culverts will wash away topsoil, that fences will have to be built to keep 
cattle out of the mud pits, that the lessee is using all the water that is now 
needed for crops or livestock, and finally, that he has tried to find someone to 
talk to about it but that he missed the landman who has now returned to the home 
office and is on vacation for a couple of weeks.

It is also 
axiomatic that the severity of these problems grows in an inverse proportion to 
the amount of mineral interest which the rancher has in the leased premises. If 
snow drifts are high, cattle prices unsteady and the rancher client has a full 
one-eighth reserved royalty, and the driller also told him that morning in the 
restaurant that this was a great oil prospect, the dreams of a luxurious 
retirement in a sunnier clime will surely ameliorate the crisis; but, if the 
meadows were wet and now badly rutted, and his mineral interest is nil anyway, 
then quicker than can be muttered "Application for Temporary Injunction," the 
client will demand the balm of instant legal redress and damages as an 
alternative to his itchy shotgun trigger finger. Brimmer, supra, V Land & 
Water L.Rev. at 50. He further related:

In 
explaining the relative rights of the surface owner and the mineral lessee, it 
seldom soothes the rancher's ruffled feathers to observe, audibly at least, that 
the lease's printed form contains many provisions, ordinarily negotiable, which 
could have been modified or eliminated by a timely legal consultation at its 
inception. But, if the inequalities unwittingly created by hasty execution of 
such documents are disturbing, this is to say nothing of the appalling practical 
inequality of the negotiators who produced the situation. On the one hand is an 
urbane, diplomatic landman, well schooled in the details of his lease form and 
versed in his petroleum landman's handbook, who is the product of a hundred 
negotiating sessions this year; and on the other hand is a rancher who at worst 
may be negotiating his first lease in a lifetime and who probably may have 
leased the same tract a few years before on a similar form and did not get hurt 
because there was no development. Id. at 51.

8 Old time 
photographs show that the Wyoming Salt Creek oil field area was like a forest of 
closely adjacent wooden structure oil well rigs. No wonder there was no room for 
residences or a town on top of that prolific 
structure.

9 The growing 
crop concept of limited landowner damages has caused frequent argument in 
application to grazing lands of arid Wyoming.