Communitization of Federal Lands: An Overview

This paper is an update of a paper originally presented in 1990 at the Pooling and Unitization II special institute. The paper briefly reviews the statutory history authorizing communitization of federal oil and gas leases; the purposes and rationale behind spacing regulations; the model form of communitization agreement appearing in the BLM Manual; the procedures leading up to final approval of a communitization agreement; communitization on Indian lands; and peculiar problems that may be encountered with respect to communitization agreements. This paper is limited to Communitization Agreements, which are one of the six types of agreements recognized by the regulations concerning Cooperative Conservation Provisions.