Anderson Living Trust v. Energen Resources Corp.

O’BRIEN, Circuit Judge;

Fossil fuels are the decomposed remains of pre-historic flora (coal) and fauna (oil and gas). They have driven the world’s economy (particularly that of the United States) for over a century. Discovering marketable deposits, extracting them from the ground, refining them, and delivering them to consumers in useful form is big business, on'‘one hand fraught with risk and on the other richly rewarding. That being so, it has attracted the attention of governments as a lucrative source of tax révenue as well as royalties, bonuses, etc., derived from government-owned…