Energetics, Ltd v. Whitmill

These consolidated appeals require us to decide whether certain severed oil and gas interests in a tract of land were properly "deemed abandoned” in favor of the surface owners by operation of the dormant minerals act. Because, as we construe the act, 2 the interests in question were not abandoned, we reverse the decision of the Court of Appeals.

I

The relevant facts bearing upon the principal issue in these appeals are not in dispute. 3 Elmer Benchley and his wife, Virginia, own the surface and an undisputed 35/80 interest in the oil and gas rights in an eighty-acre parcel of land in Clare…