Class Information
Summer II 2026
5355 Oil & Gas Law - WELLS- 18169
Professor(s):
Bret Wells (FACULTY)
Credits: 3
Course Areas: Energy, Natural Resources and Environmental Law
Time: 6:00p-8:45p MTW Location: 310
Course Outline: This course covers the basic property, contract and regulatory framework for oil and gas production in Texas. It explores common law property concepts (such as the rule of capture, trespass, cotenancy, life tenancy); the provisions of an oil and gas lease negotiated between a mineral interest owner and an oil company as lessee; mineral and royalty interest conveyancing; and Railroad Commission regulation of drilling, production, pooling, and unitization for the efficient and fair development of oil and gas.
Course Syllabus: Syllabus
Course Notes: (Face-to-Face) The UH registration system instruction mode for this course is listed in parenthesis. For this instruction mode, instructors and students are expected to normally be physically present in the classroom. If the course has a final examination, it will be in a classroom requiring your physical presence. Other assessment, such as a mid-term exam, may also be in a classroom. Whether this instructor will offer “remote presence” (starting a zoom meeting from the podium computer to enable student remote access on an occasional basis) for part or all of the semester is not known, but students should not rely on an expectation that remote presence will be available.
Prerequisites:
First Day Assignments:
Final Exam Schedule:
This course will have:
Exam:
Paper:
Satisfies Senior Upper Level Writing Requirement: No
Experiential Course Type: No
Bar Course: No
DistanceEd ABA: No
Pass-Fail Student Election: Unavailable (Instructor Preference)
Course Materials
Special Case
Course Materials: Required Reading Materials: Bret Wells, Texas Oil and Gas Law: Cases and Materials (LiveCarta 5th Edition 2026)
Link to Materials. This casebook is sold only via this publisher, and not sourced through the UH Bookstore.
