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Produced Water, Other Brines, and the Substances in Them—Who Has the Right?
Original Program Date :
Length: 60 Minutes
In the last several years, there has been an increased interest in putting produced water to beneficial use. Now, there also is a growing interest in extracting lithium or other valuable substances from produced water or other brine pumped from the subsurface. This gives rise to several legal issues. This presentation will examine:
- Who has what rights to pump groundwater?
- Do the rules that apply to fresh groundwater apply to briny groundwater?
- Who owns produced water—the oil and gas operator or the landowner?
- Could one person own the water, but a different person own any minerals in the water?
- Is lithium a “mineral” for purposes of a mineral severance or mineral lease?
Keith B. Hall, Director of Mineral Law Institute and Campanile Charities Professor of Energy Law, LSU Paul M. Herbert Law Center
Keith B. Hall is Director of the Mineral Law Institute and the Campanile Charities Professor of Energy Law. He teaches Mineral Rights, Advanced Mineral Law, International Petroleum Transactions, and an Energy Law Seminar that focuses on environmental issues relating to energy industries. His publications have focused on oil and gas leases, pooling and unitization, hydraulic fracturing, induced seismicity, and the management of produced water. He is co-author of one of the two national casebooks on oil and gas law and also is co-author of a book on the legal issues relating to hydraulic fracturing. He is a frequent speaker at national and international oil and gas, energy, and environmental law conferences, and is a contributing co-author to the forthcoming new edition of the leading textbook on international petroleum transactions. In addition to teaching at LSU, he has taught energy law classes as a visiting professor at Baku State University in Azerbaijan and as an adjunct professor at Loyola School of Law. Before joining the LSU Law Center, he was a member of the firm Stone Pigman Walther Wittmann in New Orleans, where he practiced law for 16 years, with a focus on oil and gas litigation and transactions, environmental law, and toxic tort litigation.
Professor Hall is a member of the Board of Editors for the Oil & Gas Reporter, the Board of Trustees for the Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Foundation, the Advisory Council for the Institute for Energy Law, and the Board of Trustees for the Energy & Mineral Law Foundation. He is a former Chair of the Louisiana State Bar Association's Environmental Law Section and former Chair of the Oil & Gas Committee of the ABA Section of Environment, Energy and Resources. He serves on the Louisiana Law Institute’s Water Law Committee and is a registered professional engineer.
