Energy Development Corp. v. Moss

(Filed Jan. 8, 2003)

The ultimate question presented to this Court by the case before us requires an identification of who acquires the right to drill a coalbed methane gas well under the statutory scheme adopted in 1994 and set forth in Article 21, Chapter 22 of the Code of West Virginia of 1931, as amended. The immediate question posed to the Court, however, is whether, under leases executed in 1986, a lessor of “all of the oil and gas and all of the constituents of either” in and underlying certain tracts of land, acquired the right to explore for, extract and market coalbed methane gas…