Dobson v. Arkansas Oil & Gas Commission

The basic question in this case is whether our statutes empower the Oil and Gas Commission to compel the unitization of an entire oil and gas field. An area is said to be unitized when various ownerships are treated as a unit in the production of oil and gas. In the usual case the owners of several small contiguous tracts, totaling perhaps forty acres, agree that a single well shall be drilled in the unitized area and that all the owners shall share proportionately in the oil and gas, regardless of whose land happens to be the situs of the well. In this case the principle of unitization has…