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Idaho Statutes
Idaho Statutes are updated to the website July 1 following the legislative session.
MINES AND MINING
CHAPTER 3
OIL AND GAS WELLS — GEOLOGIC INFORMATION, AND PREVENTION OF WASTE
47-310. Definitions. Unless the context otherwise requires, the terms defined in this section shall have the following meanings when used in this act. The use of the plural includes the singular, and the use of the singular includes the plural.
(1) "Administrator" means the division administrator for oil and gas conservation within the department of lands, as established under section 58-104A, Idaho Code.
(2) "American association of professional landmen" is the land profession’s resource for support, ethical standards of practice, career advancement, and legislative advocacy.
(3) "American petroleum institute" or "API" is the largest petroleum and natural gas trade organization in America and represents all segments of America’s natural gas and oil industry. API was formed in 1919 as a standards-setting organization and has developed more than seven hundred (700) standards to enhance operational and environmental safety, efficiency, and sustainability.
(4) "Arms-length contract" means a contract or agreement that has been arrived at in the marketplace between independent, nonaffiliated persons with opposing economic interests regarding that contract. For purposes of this chapter, two persons are affiliated if one person controls, is controlled by, or is under common control with another person. The following percentages, based on the instruments of ownership of the voting securities of an entity, or based on other forms of ownership, determine if persons are affiliated:
(a) Ownership in excess of fifty percent (50%) constitutes control, or as defined in the joint operating agreement.
(b) Ownership of ten percent (10%) through fifty percent (50%) creates a presumption of control.
(c) Ownership of less than ten percent (10%) creates a presumption of noncontrol, which the commission may rebut if it demonstrates actual or legal control, including the existence of interlocking directorates. Notwithstanding any other provisions of this chapter, contracts between relatives, either by blood or by marriage, are not arms-length contracts. To be considered arms-length for any production month, a contract must meet the requirements of this definition for that production month and must have met the requirements when the contract was executed.
(5) "Commission" means the oil and gas conservation commission.
(6) "Condensate" means the light liquid hydrocarbons that occur as a gas under initial subsurface conditions that condense into a liquid with a decrease in pressure below the dew point during production in the reservoir and at the surface, or only at the surface. The API gravity of condensate is typically fifty (50) degrees to one hundred twenty (120) degrees.
(7) "Confidential well status" refers to a well for which the operator has applied and received confidential status from the commission pursuant to section 47-327, Idaho Code. Information about a confidential well is exempt from disclosure as to the public, but not with regard to the commission or other state authority.
(8) "Correlative rights" means the opportunity of each owner in a pool to produce his just and equitable share of oil and gas in a pool without waste.
(9) "Days" means calendar days unless otherwise noted.
(10) "Department" means the Idaho department of lands.
(11) "End purchaser" means a third-party, arms-length purchaser of oil, gas or condensate that is ready for refining or other use or a third-party, arms-length purchaser of other fluid or gaseous hydrocarbons that have been separated in a processing facility.
(12) "Exploration" means activities related to the various geological and geophysical methods used to detect and determine the existence and extent of hydrocarbon deposits. The activities related to the search for oil and gas include without limitation aerial, geological and geophysical surveys and studies, seismic work, core drilling and the drilling of test wells.
(13) "Field" means the surface area underlaid by one (1) or more pools that are related to a single geological feature.
(14) "Gas" means natural gas, which is a mixture of hydrocarbons and varying quantities of non-hydrocarbons that exist either in the gaseous phase or in solution with crude oil in natural underground reservoirs.
(15) "Gathering facility" means a facility that receives gathering lines from wells, commingles the produced materials, and then sends those materials to a processing facility.
(16) "Market value" means the price at the time of sale, in cash or on terms reasonably equivalent to cash, for which the oil and gas should bring in a competitive and open market under all conditions requisite to a fair sale, the buyer and seller each acting prudently and knowledgeably, and assuming the price is not affected by undue stimulus from either party. The costs of marketing, transporting and processing oil and gas produced shall be borne entirely by the producer, and such cost shall not reduce the severance tax directly or indirectly.
(17) "MCF" means one thousand cubic feet of gas.
(18) "Mineral interest" means the right to explore, drill or produce oil and gas laying beneath the surface of property.
(19) "Natural gas liquids" or "NGL" means the liquid hydrocarbons that are gaseous in the reservoir, but can be separated out in liquid form at the surface at the pressures and temperatures at which separators normally operate. The liquids consist of varying proportions of butane, propane, pentane and heavier fractions, with little or no methane or ethane. Natural gas liquids can be classified according to their vapor pressures as low (condensate), intermediate (natural gasoline), and high (liquefied petroleum gas).
(20) "Natural gas plant liquids" means hydrocarbon compounds in raw gas that are separated as liquids at gas processing plants, fractionating plants, and cycling plants. Natural gas plant liquids obtained include ethane, liquefied petroleum gases (propane and the butanes), and pentanes plus any heavier hydrocarbon compounds. Component products may be fractionated or mixed.
(21) "Occupied structure" means a building with walls and a roof within which individuals live or customarily work.
(22) "Oil" means and includes crude petroleum oil and other hydrocarbons, regardless of gravity, that are produced at the wellhead in liquid form and the liquid hydrocarbons known as distillate or condensate recovered or extracted from gas.
(23) "Oil and gas" means oil or gas or both. Oil and gas refers not only to oil and gas in combination with each other but also generally to oil, gas, casinghead gas, casinghead gasoline, gas-distillate or other hydrocarbons, or any combination or combinations thereof, which may be found in or produced from a common source or supply of oil, oil and gas, or gas-distillate.
(24) "Oil and gas facility" means equipment or improvements used or installed at an oil and gas location for the exploration, production, withdrawal, gathering, treatment or processing of oil or natural gas.
(25) "Oil and gas operations" means operations to explore for, develop or produce oil and gas.
(26) "Operator" means any duly authorized person who is in charge of the development of a lease, pool, or spacing or unitized area, or the operation of a producing well.
(27) "Owner" means the person who has the right to drill into and produce from a pool and to appropriate the oil and gas that he produces therefrom, either for himself or for himself and others.
(28) "Person" means any natural person, corporation, association, partnership, receiver, trustee, executor, administrator, guardian, fiduciary or other representative of any kind and includes any government or any political subdivision of any agency thereof. The masculine gender, in referring to a person, includes the feminine and the neuter genders.
(29) "Pool" means an underground reservoir containing a common accumulation of oil or gas, or both. Each zone of a structure that is completely separated from any other zone in the same structure is a pool.
(30) "Processing facility" means a facility that refines gas and liquid hydrocarbons.
(31) "Producer" means the owner of a well or wells capable of producing oil and gas.
(32) "Reservoir" means a subsurface volume of porous and permeable rock in which oil and gas may have accumulated.
(33) "Royalty owner" means any owner of an interest in an oil and gas lease that entitles him to share in the production of the oil and gas under the lease.
(34) "Tract" means an expanse of land that:
(a) May be identified by its public land survey system of rectangular surveys that subdivides and describes land in the United States in the public domain and is regulated by the United States department of the interior, bureau of land management;
(b) Is of no particular size;
(c) May be irregular in form;
(d) Is contiguous;
(e) May lay in more than one (1) township or one (1) section;
(f) May have a boundary defined entirely or in part by natural monuments such as streams, divides or straight lines connecting prominent features of topography; and
(g) May be combined with other tracts to form a lease.
(35) "Uncommitted owner" means an owner who is not leased or otherwise contractually obligated to the operator.
(36)(a) "Waste" as applied to gas shall include the escape, blowing or releasing, directly or indirectly, into the open air of gas from wells productive of gas only, or of gas in an excessive or unreasonable amount from wells producing oil or both oil and gas; and the production of gas in quantities or in such manner as will unreasonably reduce reservoir pressure or unreasonably diminish the quantity of oil and gas that might ultimately be produced; excepting gas that is reasonably necessary in the drilling, completing and testing of wells and in furnishing power for the production of wells.
(b) "Waste" as applied to oil means and includes: underground waste; inefficient, excessive or improper use or dissipation of reservoir energy, including gas energy and water drive; surface waste, open-pit storage and waste incident to the production of oil in excess of the producer’s aboveground storage facilities and lease and contractual requirements, but excluding storage (other than open-pit storage) reasonably necessary for building up and maintaining crude stocks and products thereof for consumption, use and sale; and the locating, drilling, equipping, operating or producing of any well in a manner that causes, or tends to cause, reduction of the quantity of oil and gas ultimately recoverable from a pool under prudent and proper operations.
(37) "Workover" means an operation in which a well is reentered for the purpose of maintaining or repairing it.
(38) "Zone" means a single continuous deposit of oil or gas, or both oil and gas, in the pores of a reservoir. A zone has a single pressure system and does not communicate with other zones.
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