Pickens v. Railroad Commission

The Texas Railroad Commission (defendant) issued a proration order allocating half of a field's producible oil based on each well's surface acreage and the other half based on each well's acre-feet of productive subsurface volume; well owners with more acre-feet, including Pickens (plaintiffs), argued the formula shortchanged their correlative rights and preferred an allocation based purely on acre-feet, presenting evidence they would suffer uncompensated drainage. The Commission's evidence countered that net drainage would actually favor the plaintiffs' wells due to water encroachment from the field's edges, and the trial court upheld the order; the plaintiffs appealed.