Title 15 — Natural Resources and Economic Development

(1) Any owner of lands upon which a lease for the development of oil or gas or other minerals has been given and the lessee forfeits his or her rights at any time to further prospect for such minerals upon the lands by reason of a failure to pay periodical rentals or failure to p…

(a) If any installment of rental due under a lease is not paid when due according to the terms of the original lease, thus causing a forfeiture and termination of the lease, the then-owner of the fee in the lands affected may endorse on the margin of the record of the original le…

A.C.A. § 15-73-206Current through all legislation of the 2025 Regular Session.Arkansas Code of 1987 Annotated Official EditionCopyright © 2026 by the State of Arkansas All rights reserved

(a) A mineral lessee under an oil and gas lease does not owe a fiduciary duty or a fiduciary obligation to the mineral lessor. (b) The mineral lessee shall:(1) Perform the covenants of the lease in good faith; and(2) Develop and operate the leased mineral estate as a prudent oper…

(a) A person holding a mineral lease shall notify the owner of the mineral rights upon which the lease has been given upon the first transfer of the mineral lease to another person if the transfer occurs within twenty-four (24) months after the execution of the lease. (b) The wri…

Whenever any land in this state may hereafter be, or shall have heretofore been, devised by will or conveyed by grant to any person by any language which at common law would have vested in that person an estate in fee tail, then the person who at common law would have been invest…

(1) Whenever any life tenant shall desire to lease any land for the production of oil and gas, he or she shall file a verified petition with the circuit court of the county in which the lands or the greater part thereof may be situated, praying for authority to execute the lease.…

(a) The circuit court shall consider the petition, and may, in its absolute discretion, require that other persons as it deems proper be made parties to the proceeding. (b) All proceedings under the provisions of this subchapter shall begin at any time the court shall be in sessi…

(1) If the circuit court after the hearing shall determine that the lease should be executed, it shall enter an order authorizing the life tenant to execute the lease. The court shall:(1) Determine the extent to which the estate of the life tenant may be damaged or impaired by th…

(a) After the trustee shall have executed the bond required by the circuit court, the life tenant shall execute and present to the court for its examination the oil and gas lease so authorized, which lease shall show what part of the consideration, rents, and royalties shall be p…

(a) The trustee shall be under the continuing control of the circuit court. (b) The circuit court may remove the trustee at will, and on the death, removal from the county, or resignation of the trustee, the court may appoint his or her successor. (c) The trustee, by and with the…

(1) The order of the court fixing the proportionate part of the minerals allowed to the life tenant as compensation for damages, and the order confirming the execution of the lease, shall operate to:(1) Work a divestiture of title of the contingent remaindermen, and each of them,…

If any lease executed under the provisions of this subchapter shall forfeit, expire, become cancelled, or be rescinded before the death of the life tenant, the life tenant may execute a new lease in the manner provided by this subchapter, but in that case the court shall not allo…

Whenever a life estate in lands has been in existence for thirty (30) years and oil has been produced from such lands for twenty (20) years under an oil and gas lease or leases executed by a life tenant, to whom the creator of the life estate had subsequently conveyed or attempte…

Whenever any land in fee, the oil and gas in, on, and under such lands, situated in the State of Arkansas, shall be owned by two (2) or more persons, firms, or corporations in joint tenancy, in common or in coparcenary, and there shall be no actual production therefrom of oil and…

Any such owner, or owners, desiring a sale and partition of the oil and gas leasehold interests shall file, in the circuit court of the county in which the lands or the greater part thereof lie, a written petition describing the lands in and under which the oil and gas interests …

Summons shall be issued and served as in other cases in circuit court and if any defendant shall be a nonresident of the state, or his or her whereabouts unknown to the plaintiff, such person may be constructively summoned, as provided by Rule 4 of the Arkansas Rules of Civil Pro…

Any person having or claiming an interest in the land in fee, or in any oil and gas leasehold rights, not made a party in the petition may appear and intervene in the cause.

(a) The statutory guardian of an infant or a person of unsound mind may unite in the petition in conjunction with his or her ward. (b) The infant, or person of unsound mind, may be made party defendant, in which case his or her guardian may appear and defend for him or her. (c) I…

(a) If, at any time, after the filing of the petition and before a sale of the property, it should be made to appear to the circuit court that the interests of the various owners could be more fully protected and the value of the various interests of the parties increased by the …

(1) Insofar as § 18-60-401 et seq., relating to the partition of land, is not in conflict with this subchapter, § 18-60-401 et seq. shall apply to the partition of interests in oil and gas leasehold rights on, in, and under lands. However, it shall not be necessary for the circui…

All spouses of the various owners of interests in oil and gas rights shall be necessary parties to the suit in partition, and the sale of the property by the commissioner under the decree, or the leasing of the property by the receiver as provided in this subchapter, shall effect…

Where a decree has been rendered under the provisions of this subchapter against a defendant or defendants, constructively summoned and who did not appear, the defendants or any one (1) or more of them may, at any time within six (6) months, and not thereafter, after the renditio…

(a) All division orders or any declaration of interest in gas between the purchaser of gas production and the owner of the production in Arkansas or between the purchasers of gas production or the owner of the production and the royalty interest owners in Arkansas shall contain t…

(a) All crude petroleum oil produced in this state shall be measured in gauge-tanks. The pipelines through which the crude petroleum oil is conveyed from oil wells to the gauge-tanks shall be placed on the surface of the ground and no bypasses shall extend from the pipelines betw…

(a) It shall be unlawful for any person, firm, corporation, or association, being the owner or operator of any oil or gas well in this state, to take or remove any oil or oil-bearing gas from any lease, unless the oil or gas so taken and removed from the lease is to be gauged or …

(a) It shall be unlawful for any person, firm, or corporation who may purchase any oil produced in this state to in any way discount, dock, or short crude oil for waste, shrinking, or other causes, but such purchases when computed shall be on one hundred percent (100%) net oil me…

This subchapter shall be known and may be cited as the “Standard Gas Measurement Law”.

(a) The term “cubic foot of gas” or “standard cubic foot of gas” means the volume of gas contained in one cubic foot (1 cf) of space at a standard pressure base and at a standard temperature base. (b) The standard pressure base shall be fourteen and sixty-five one hundredths poun…

(a) The Oil and Gas Commission is authorized and empowered, in the absence of the availability of satisfactory actual data based upon observed or recorded specific gravity and flowing temperature determinations, to determine the average specific gravity and average flowing temper…

Any person required to report volumes of gas production under the laws of this state shall report such volumes in number of thousands of standard cubic feet calculated and determined under the provisions of this subchapter.

(a) Each and every sale and each and every purchase, delivery, and receipt of gas by volume made in this state, for which any accounting for the price paid or received for the gas so sold, purchased, delivered, or received must be made to an oil and gas lease owner, royalty owner…

(a) A dealer shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction shall be fined in any sum not less than fifty dollars ($50.00) nor more than five hundred dollars ($500), if that dealer:(1) Offers for sale any of the oils or fluids mentioned in this subchapter that:(A) Have not …

The Secretary of the Department of Finance and Administration shall have authority to promulgate such rules in regard to the enforcement of this subchapter as shall not be inconsistent with the provisions of this subchapter which in his or her judgment will best serve to carry ou…

(1) No inspector or deputy, while in office, shall:(1) Be interested, directly or indirectly, in the manufacture or sale of any of the oils or gasoline specified in this subchapter; or(2) For the purpose of inspection, testing, or gauging the same, take away or appropriate for hi…

(1) No article or commodity shall be sold or offered for sale in the State of Arkansas as gasoline, motor vehicle fuel, special motor vehicle fuel, illuminating oils, or heating oils unless it shall conform to specifications as follows:(1) The fuels mentioned above shall be free …

(a) Where inspectors find gasoline being sold or offered for sale by any dealer that does not meet the specifications as set out in this subchapter, they must condemn the gasoline and affix to gasoline pumps the following placards as the occasion requires: “THIS GASOLINE DOES NOT…

The removing, altering, disfiguring, or defacing of any placard or any part thereof shall be treated as a misdemeanor. Any person, firm, or corporation guilty of that misdemeanor shall be fined in a sum not more than five hundred dollars ($500) nor less than fifty dollars ($50.00…

No oils or fluids that ignite or burn at any temperature less than that established by the current ASTM International standards or such other standards as the Arkansas Bureau of Standards may establish shall be offered for sale or used for illuminating or heating purposes within …

The person, firm, or corporation who receives motor vehicle fuel must keep in his or her possession and file in an orderly manner statements showing distillation tests, bills of lading, or invoices, as the case may be, covering each quantity received, and those items are to be su…

(a) Whenever any person, firm, or corporation shall receive any of the oils or gasoline mentioned in this subchapter that has not been tested under the laws of this state, it shall be his or her or its duty to:(1) Cause to be tested, or test, the oils or gasoline as provided in t…

(a) The Secretary of the Department of Finance and Administration, or his or her deputies or inspectors, whose duty it is to enforce this subchapter, shall keep a correct record of all oils and fluids inspected by them in a book provided for by the state for that purpose. They sh…

(a) (1) Any person engaged in the business of buying any crude oil for manufacture or sale thereof, who shall discriminate between different pools of crude oil in this state by purchasing crude oil at a lower price in one (1) pool than is paid for crude oil of the same kind, qual…

(a) It shall be unlawful for any major oil company to require or seek to require a commissioned agent of the products of the major oil company to:(1) Purchase the oil business at a price in which the major oil company has used the United States Department of Energy fuel allocatio…

(a) The proceeds derived from the sale of oil or gas production from any oil or gas well shall be paid to persons legally entitled thereto, commencing no later than six (6) months after the date of first sale and thereafter no later than sixty (60) days after the end of the calen…

(a) If the first purchaser, or owner of the right to drill and produce substituted for the first commercial purchaser as provided in this subchapter, violates this subchapter by willfully withholding payments without just cause or through bad faith from persons legally entitled t…

(a) Any court of competent jurisdiction of the county in which the oil or gas well is located shall have jurisdiction over all proceedings brought pursuant to this subchapter. (b) If persons legally entitled to the proceeds seek relief for the failure of the purchaser to make tim…

(a) An obligation arises under an oil and gas lease to pay or to deliver oil or gas royalties to the mineral owner or his or her assignee or to deliver oil or gas to a purchaser to the credit of the mineral owner or his or her assignee, and willful breach by the owner of the righ…

(a) For any gas well completed as a commercially productive well subsequent to the passage of this section, the party designated as operator of the well shall sell, and the operator's first purchaser shall purchase, the gas production attributable to the interest of any party who…

Any person willfully or maliciously violating any of the provisions of this subchapter shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction shall be fined in any sum of not less than one hundred dollars ($100) nor more than five hundred dollars ($500).