By Duston K. McFaul & Juliana Hoffman (Sidley)
On October 14, 2020, the honorable Christopher Sontchi, Chief Judge of the Delaware Bankruptcy Court, issued an opinion in the Extraction Oil and Gas bankruptcy case finding that certain oil, gas and water gathering agreements (the “Agreements”) did not create covenants running with the land under Colorado law and are thus subject to rejection in Extraction’s chapter 11 proceedings. The Bankruptcy Court applied Colorado law, which requires that the following three elements be satisfied: (1) the parties must intend to create a covenant running with the land; (2) the covenant must touch and concern the land with which it runs; and (3) there must be privity of estate between the covenanting parties. The Bankruptcy Court analyzed these elements relative to the debtor’s leasehold interest.
The Extraction decision is the Delaware Bankruptcy Court’s first published foray into a recent thicket of gathering agreement litigation that was reignited in 2016 with the Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York authorizing the rejection of certain gathering agreements in the Sabine Oil & Gas bankruptcy case. Following Sabine, various oil and gas producers in chapter 11 attempted to use Sabine as a basis for invalidating dedications and shedding minimum volume and other commitments in their own gathering agreements. Such efforts were rebuffed in 2019 by the Colorado Bankruptcy Court in Badlands and by the Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas in Alta Mesa, each of which analyzed the elements of the asserted covenants running with the land relative to the debtor’s leasehold interest. The courts in Badlands and Alta Mesa each found that the agreements at issue created valid real property covenants under applicable state law and were thus not executory contracts that could be rejected in bankruptcy.
The Extraction case diverged from Badlands and Alta Mesa in its narrow holding, which analyzed the purported covenants in the context of only the debtor’s mineral estate, and ultimately concluded the midstream agreements did not contain an enforceable covenant running with the land. The Extraction rulings are currently on appeal before the Delaware District Court.
The full article is available here.