Mississippi § 53-3-103 - Oil and Gas Board may order unit operation.

§ 53-3-103. Oil and Gas Board may order unit operation.

The State Oil and Gas Board may issue an order requiring such unit operation, if it finds that: Unit operation of the field or of any pool or pools, or of any portion or portions or combinations thereof within the field, is reasonably necessary in order to effectively carry on secondary recovery, pressure maintenance, repressuring operations, cycling operations, water flooding operations, or any combination thereof, or any other form of joint effort calculated to substantially increase the ultimate recovery of oil or gas or both, from the unit so formed, or to prevent waste as defined in Section 53-1-3; and One or more method of unitized operation as applied to such common source of supply or portion thereof is feasible and will prevent waste or will with reasonable probability result in the recovery of substantially more oil or gas, or both, from the unit so formed than would otherwise be recovered; and The plan of unitization and the agreements effectuating same are fair and reasonable under all of the circumstances and protect the rights of all interested parties; and The correlative rights of interested parties will be protected; and The estimated additional cost incident to conducting such operation will not exceed the value of the estimated additional recovery of oil and gas and such cost of unit operation shall not be borne by the royalty owners. The operators of such unit shall have drilled a sufficient number of wells to a sufficient depth and at such locations as may be necessary for the board to approve the boundaries of the unit and determine that the field, pool or pools have been reasonably developed according to a spacing pattern approved by the board. No field unitization shall be approved by the board until each drilling unit of the field has been drilled; however, the board is hereby authorized to waive the requirement that each and every drilling unit be drilled upon a finding of fact that it is not economically feasible for a specific drilling unit to be drilled.