Court Opinion

ID: 9778495
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 21:09:42.084887+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:33:10.502417
License: Public Domain

DORSEY, Justice,
concurring.
The Mineral Interest Pooling Act, MIPA, authorizes forced pooling when two or more separately owned tracts of land are embraced in a common reservoir. Here, the Bennett and Forney tracts are embraced in not one, but two common reservoirs: the main and stray sands. Thus, the issue presented is whether the Commission has authority, under MIPA, to order two “common reservoirs” pooled in one MIPA proceeding.
*887In Railroad Comm’n v. Bishop,1 the court held that the MIPA language “a common reservoir” requires that separated pools or reservoirs be in natural communication in order for the Commission to have jurisdiction to order pooling. I question whether the holding in Bishop is indeed a correct statement of the law. The Bishop court’s singular construction of “a common reservoir” is unnecessarily restrictive and contrary to the express statutory purposes of MIPA: avoiding the drilling of unnecessary wells, protecting correlative rights and preventing waste. Tex.Nat.Res.Code Ann. § 102.011 (Vernon 1978).
In the instant case, appellees present compelling arguments for the proposition that the Commission properly ordered the two reservoirs pooled. But for Bishop, I would agree. However, given the current precedential status of Bishop, I must concur with the majority in holding that the two reservoirs in the instant case cannot be pooled in one MIPA proceeding.

. 736 S.W.2d 724 (Tex.App.—Waco 1987), rev’d on other grounds in part, aff’d in part, 751 S.W.2d 485 (Tex.1988).