The Texas Supreme Court on Friday agreed to grant a rehearing in a long legal battle in which predecessor companies of ExxonMobil Corp. are accused of sabotaging abandoned natural gas and oil wells in South Texas.

Emerald Oil & Gas Co. LP, which had attempted to develop some abandoned wells that had originally been drilled by a predecessor of ExxonMobil company, had asked the high court to review the case (Exxon Corp. et al vs. Emerald Oil & Gas Co. LP et al, No. 05-1076).

Landowners that allowed Emerald to work the leasehold accused ExxonMobil of filling the abandoned wells with well service “junk,” including discarded tools and sludge, to prevent future drilling. ExxonMobil has denied wrongdoing.

Emerald won at trial in 1999, but the Texas Supreme Court later reversed the finding, which threw the case back to the Thirteenth Court of Appeals in Corpus Christi, TX. The high court’s reversal, however, led some state officials to urge the case be reopened.

Jerry Patterson, commissioner of the Texas General Land Office, earlier this year filed an amicus brief for Emerald urging the high court to reconsider. Patterson also asked the Railroad Commission of Texas (RRC), which regulates gas and oil activities in the state, to hold hearings into ExxonMobil’s “intentional sabotage” of wells in Refugio County, TX, as well as “the company’s fraudulent reports covering up the damage.”

Patterson said in a letter to the RRC in August, “If these intentional false filings and improper pluggings do not result in substantial penalties by the RRC, then the oil and gas industry in Texas will be on notice that RRC’s rules and forms are optional, not mandatory.”

No hearing date has been set.

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