Surface Use Agreements and Pipeline Easements: Securing Plugging, Removal, and Restoration Costs Through Assignment and Bankruptcy

Lisa Rothberg, Shareholder | Dore Rothberg Law, P.C.

Lisa Rothberg is a Shareholder of Dore Rothberg Law, P.C. in Houston, where she serves as Liens & Transactions Director and Bankruptcy Director and leads the firm’s transactional section. She began her legal career as an oil and gas title attorney and now focuses on complex commercial business transactions in the energy, construction, and real estate industries, with a specialty in perfecting security interests in oil, gas, and alternative energy properties. She is especially well suited to this program: years of drafting and negotiating oil and gas leases, assignments, and easements, substantial experience in energy-industry business bankruptcies, including priority disputes for creditors and unsecured creditor committees, and Board Certification in Oil, Gas, and Mineral Law, bringing the perspective of a transactional lawyer who knows how surface promises fare when an operator fails.

• Education & Credentials

Ms. Rothberg earned her J.D. from South Texas College of Law in 2010 and her B.S., magna cum laude, from Texas A&M University in 2006. She is admitted in Texas and before the U.S. District Courts for the Southern, Northern, and Western Districts of Texas, and she is Board Certified in Oil, Gas, and Mineral Law.

• Recognition & Leadership

Ms. Rothberg holds three leadership roles at her firm, serving as Shareholder, Liens & Transactions Director, and Bankruptcy Director, and she leads the firm’s transactional section. Her Board Certification in Oil, Gas, and Mineral Law places her among the Texas attorneys recognized for specialized expertise in the field.

• Professional Involvement

Ms. Rothberg is a member of the State Bar of Texas Oil, Gas & Energy Resources Law Section, the Moller-Foltz Inn of Court, the Texas Aggie Bar Association, and the Aggie Women Network. She also volunteers with the Joan and Stanford Alexander Jewish Family Service.

• Experience

Ms. Rothberg’s practice involves the analysis, preparation, and perfection of security interests in real and personal property, and she files lien claims for contractors, subcontractors, and material suppliers throughout the country, navigating state-by-state procedural nuances and complex lien priority and waiver issues. Her energy practice includes drafting, reviewing, and negotiating documents for property owners, oilfield service companies, drilling contractors, and E&P companies, including oil and gas leases and assignments, purchase and sale agreements, joint operating agreements, farmouts, master service agreements, drilling contracts, and title opinions. She also handles real estate matters such as title and escrow, deeds, leases, boundary disputes, easements, and wrongful liens, and has substantial experience analyzing priority disputes in energy-industry bankruptcies.

Kyle Tisdel, Senior Attorney | Western Environmental Law Center

Kyle Tisdel has worked at the Western Environmental Law Center since 2011, serving as a senior attorney and the director of its Climate & Energy Program from Taos, New Mexico. His work centers on the nexus of public lands and fossil fuel development, with the aim of aligning federal decision-making with the demands of climate science, bringing a managed end to fossil fuel exploitation, and ensuring a just transition for Indigenous and frontline communities. He is especially well suited to this program: he has prevailed in dozens of federal cases challenging oil and gas leasing and drilling decisions, he frequently engages state and federal governments on oil and gas policy, and he has spoken publicly about the industry’s failure to save for the retirement of its wells, bringing the perspective of a public-interest litigator focused on who bears the costs operators leave behind.

• Education & Credentials

Mr. Tisdel earned his law degree from Vermont Law School, where he was editor-in-chief of the Vermont Journal of Environmental Law, and his B.A. in international relations from Michigan State University.

• Recognition & Leadership

Mr. Tisdel leads the Western Environmental Law Center’s Climate & Energy Program, which he has directed since joining the organization as a staff attorney in 2011. His litigation has set new precedent on the federal government’s obligation to consider the cumulative impacts of climate change and the harms to people and communities in its fossil fuel decisions.

• Professional Involvement

Mr. Tisdel frequently engages state and federal governments on climate and environmental justice policy and has discussed New Mexico oil and gas legislation on New Mexico PBS. He has been interviewed by MIT Climate on environmental justice in the American West and has spoken on panels including Gonzaga University’s program on solving the climate crisis while protecting wild spaces.

• Experience

Mr. Tisdel has prevailed in dozens of cases in federal court. His suite of lawsuits over oil and gas leasing led the federal government to review and reconsider decisions to sell nearly four million acres of public lands, and he represented Diné and conservation groups in Greater Chaco litigation in which a federal appeals court rejected drilling and fracking approvals in northwest New Mexico. He has also challenged Bureau of Land Management approvals of hundreds of oil and gas permits for failing to consider cumulative impacts on people and the environment.

SESSION 1 – Drafting Surface Use and Pipeline Easement Terms That Survive Assignment and Operator Bankruptcy | Lisa Rothberg | 2:30pm – 3:30pm

This session walks through the restoration, plug-and-reclaim, pipeline-abandonment, assignment, and security clauses in oil and gas surface use agreements and gathering-line easements, from both the landowner and the operator side. Attorneys will learn why the midstream rejection cases leave surface promises exposed when an operator or a thinly capitalized assignee files for bankruptcy, which duties can be written into the granting instrument as covenants running with the land, how to define a measurable restoration end state and reclamation triggers, and how to keep security outside the operator’s estate. Attendees will leave with a clause-by-clause redline showing opening and fallback positions for each side and a checklist for surviving assignment and insolvency.

BREAK | 3:30pm – 3:40pm

SESSION 2 – The Financial Assurance Gap: Bonding Reform, Orphaned Wells, and Who Pays When the Operator Walks | Kyle Tisdel | 3:40pm – 4:40pm

This session examines the regulatory architecture that is supposed to guarantee plugging, removal, and reclamation — and why, for most wells, it does not. Attorneys will learn what federal bonding minimums actually cover and what the proposed rescission of the 2024 BLM rule would leave behind; how New Mexico’s 2026 bonding and cleanup reform — now among the strongest in the nation — reshaped single-well assurance, inactive and marginal well obligations, and operator transfer screens; how aging assets migrate to thinly capitalized operators and shed their cleanup obligations in bankruptcy, feeding the orphaned-well inventory; and the levers counsel for landowners, communities, and states can pull — in rulemakings, transfer proceedings, and enforcement — to close the gap the contract alone cannot. Attendees will leave with a framework for measuring the assurance gap behind any operator and pairing regulatory leverage with the private security covered in Session 1.