The Correlative Rights of Man
Summer school is awesome. It's like regular school, but in the summer. Which is great, because I would rather go to Professional Responsibility with the Deezer at 8:40 am than sleep in and do nothing, like I did last summer. Along with PR, I happen to be taking Oil and Gas Law this summer, and a recent topic we discussed got me thinking.
In O&G law, there is a doctrine entitled "correlative rights." The basic gist is that when multiple surface owners own mineral rights that stem from the same source, each should have a fair opportunity to produce from that source. Basically, if you and I own adjoining tracts of land and there is a common oil reservoir running underneath our tracts, I am not allowed to hamper or impair your opportunity to produce oil from that reservoir. This is accomplished using regulations and statues that limit production amounts. For you lawyerly types, this is a public policy-induced restriction on the rule of capture. The thinking is that without these restrictions, an owner could suck up as much oil as he possibly could, denying his neighbor that opportunity and resulting in the waste of much of the supply. The academic justification is this doctrine of correlative rights.
Note that the doctrine does not require that all owners produce, merely that they have the opportunity to do so. This is the essence of equality; that everyone have the same opportunities. What we choose to do with those opportunities is up to the individual. The so-called "level playing field" desired by certain sectors of our society is a bastardization of equality. They say "Equal Opportunity," but they mean "Retribution." I am all for equal opportunities, but not discrimination couched in the terms of equality.
Opportunity is often confused with entitlement, when all we are entitled to is opportunity. Get it? In other words, no one should ever be denied a job based on gender, race, religion, or anything else. But they shouldn't get a job based on that either. These are the correlative rights of man. We each have the opportunity to produce from a common source and no person or entity can deny us that. But whether we do produce is up to us. If we do not, we have no one else to blame.
In O&G law, there is a doctrine entitled "correlative rights." The basic gist is that when multiple surface owners own mineral rights that stem from the same source, each should have a fair opportunity to produce from that source. Basically, if you and I own adjoining tracts of land and there is a common oil reservoir running underneath our tracts, I am not allowed to hamper or impair your opportunity to produce oil from that reservoir. This is accomplished using regulations and statues that limit production amounts. For you lawyerly types, this is a public policy-induced restriction on the rule of capture. The thinking is that without these restrictions, an owner could suck up as much oil as he possibly could, denying his neighbor that opportunity and resulting in the waste of much of the supply. The academic justification is this doctrine of correlative rights.
Note that the doctrine does not require that all owners produce, merely that they have the opportunity to do so. This is the essence of equality; that everyone have the same opportunities. What we choose to do with those opportunities is up to the individual. The so-called "level playing field" desired by certain sectors of our society is a bastardization of equality. They say "Equal Opportunity," but they mean "Retribution." I am all for equal opportunities, but not discrimination couched in the terms of equality.
Opportunity is often confused with entitlement, when all we are entitled to is opportunity. Get it? In other words, no one should ever be denied a job based on gender, race, religion, or anything else. But they shouldn't get a job based on that either. These are the correlative rights of man. We each have the opportunity to produce from a common source and no person or entity can deny us that. But whether we do produce is up to us. If we do not, we have no one else to blame.
posted by The Humble Best at 3:17 PM
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