Court Opinion

ID: 9566633
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 19:41:29.330073+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:38:48.148228
License: Public Domain

OP ALA, Justice,
dissenting from Part I and concurring in Part II of the court’s opinion.
The court holds in Part I of today’s pronouncement that “[wjhere the propriety of unit development costs is a question governed by private agreement between parties holding interests in the unit, the private rights nature of the action would properly place the question within the district courts’ determination” [footnote text omitted]. I must recede from this view.
The jurisdiction statutorily conferred on the Corporation Commission by the terms of 52 O.S. 1981 § 87.1(e)1 to determine controversies relative to reasonable costs of wells drilled under a pooling order is an exercise of the State’s police power over rights created solely by public law. This power is an inalienable attribute of sovereignty. It cannot be relinquished or bargained away.2
The view I counsel the court to adopt today is that no private contract may operate to oust the Commission of its primary cognizance to resolve disputed public-law claims to reasonable unit develop*300ment costs.3
I would hence vacate Order CD No. 125163 and remand the case with directions to determine the tendered controversy over costs.

. The terms of 52 O.S. 1981 § 87.1(e) provide in pertinent part:
" * * * Such pooling order of the Commission shall make definite provisions for the payment of cost of the development and operation, which shall be limited to the actual expenditures required for such purpose not in excess of what are reasonable, including a reasonable charge for supervision. In the event of any dispute relative to such costs, the Commission shall determine the proper costs after due notice to interested parties and a hearing thereon." [Emphasis mine]

. Tenneco Oil Co. v. El Paso Natural Gas, Okl., 687 P.2d 1049, 1056-1059 [1984], (Opala, J., dissenting).

. Stipe v. Theus, Okl., 603 P.2d 347, 350 [1979] and Crest Resources v. Corporation Commission, Okl., 617 P.2d 215, 218 [1980].