CONSTITUTIONAL LAW - OIL AND GAS - VALIDITY OF WELL-SPACING ACT - PROPORTIONATE SHARING OF PROCEEDS BY OWNERS OF LAND IN STATUTORY DRILLING UNIT

Acting under the Well-Spacing Act, the Corporation Commission of Oklahoma divided certain rural oil areas into tenacre drilling units. Plaintiff owned six and one-quarter acres of a drilling unit, and the well, located in the center of the unit, was wholly on his land. The statute provided that each of the various owners of tracts making up a drilling unit should share in the oil royalties in the proportion that the acreage of his tract bore to the total acreage of the drilling unit. Plaintiff sought to recover all the royalty on oil produced from the well, contending that the statute and order violated the contract, due process and equal protection clauses of the Federal Constitution.

The Oklahoma court held the statute and order valid as a reasonable exercise of the police power. On appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States, it was held that no substantial federal question had been raised, and the appeal was dismissed for want of jurisdiction. Patterson v. Stanolind Oil & Gas Co., (U.S. 1939) 59 S. Ct. 259.