Pipeline Easement Condemnation Lawyer for Texas Landowners

A pipeline easement is permanent. The company that builds a 24-inch crude line across your ranch this year will own the right to be there, to come back, and often to add lines, for as long as the pipe is in the ground. The per-rod price is the smallest part of what you are negotiating.

Texas gives pipeline companies the power of eminent domain only if they are true common carriers or gas utilities serving the public, and since 2021 it requires the easement they offer to spell out the terms that used to be left vague. Both requirements are enforced only by owners who know to enforce them.

Sadovsky & Ellis represents property owners only. We review pipeline offers at no charge and tell you where the offer, the appraisal and the easement fall short.

Can a pipeline company really condemn my land?

Usually, but not automatically. Section 111.019 of the Natural Resources Code gives eminent domain to common carriers — pipelines that transport for hire and are open to the public — and Chapter 181 of the Utilities Code gives it to gas utilities. A private line built to move one company’s own product to its own facility is neither. The Texas Supreme Court held in the Denbury Green Pipeline cases that a company cannot make itself a common carrier by checking a box on a Railroad Commission form; it must show a reasonable probability that, at or after construction, the line will serve the public by transporting for one or more customers who are not affiliated with it.

That is a real threshold, and it is the first thing we examine: who the shippers are, whether the tariff is filed, and whether the line is a gathering system, an intrastate transmission line, or something the company is calling a common carrier for convenience. Most Eagle Ford lines will clear it. Some will not, and a company that cannot condemn has to buy the easement on your terms.

The easement terms Texas now requires — section 21.0114

Since 2021, a private pipeline condemnor’s initial offer must include the actual easement instrument, and section 21.0114 of the Property Code requires that instrument to address each of the following. An easement that leaves any of them out is not a lawful offer, and each is a point of negotiation:

• Maximum number of pipelines. One line, or the right to lay more later without paying again. This single term can double the value of what is being taken.
• Maximum diameter and minimum depth. A 12-inch line at 36 inches and a 42-inch line at 48 inches are different burdens on farming, water wells and future development.
• What may be transported. Crude, natural gas, NGLs, produced water, CO2, hydrogen. Sour gas and high-pressure liquids carry different risk, insurance and resale consequences.
• Above-ground equipment. Valves, pig launchers, cathodic protection, meter stations, and where they may sit.
• Exact location and maximum width. A metes-and-bounds description or plat, not “a route to be determined,” plus the permanent and temporary construction widths.
• Double-ditching. Whether topsoil is segregated and replaced on top in areas that are not bored. It matters on farmland and pasture.
• Exclusivity and third-party access. Whether the company can let others use the corridor, and whether you keep the right to cross, fence, graze and build roads over it.
• Damages, restoration, gates and fences. The right to recover for construction damage and for future operations and maintenance, the restoration standard, and who builds and keeps the gates.
• Assignment. Notice and consent rights if the easement is sold to a company you have never dealt with.

Beyond the statutory list, owners routinely negotiate abandonment and removal obligations, indemnity for the company’s operations, limits on herbicide use, protection for water wells and livestock, and a prohibition on surface facilities outside a defined footprint. None of these appear in the land agent’s form, because the form was written for the company.

What the offer is missing: damage to the remainder

Section 21.042 of the Property Code entitles you to the market value of the easement strip and the reduction in value of the land you keep. Pipeline appraisals commonly value the strip at a percentage of fee value and stop there. They do not account for a divided pasture, a lost building site, the effect of a high-pressure sour-gas line on a residential subdivision plan, the lender who will not finance across an unrestricted easement, or the buyer who simply pays less for a ranch with a pipeline through the middle of it.

A counter-appraisal that values the entire tract before and after the taking is the tool that changes the number, and the cost of it is usually the best money spent in the case.

How the process works, and where the leverage is

Where we handle pipeline cases

Crude, gas and NGL gathering and transmission lines across the Eagle Ford in Karnes, La Salle, Dimmit, Frio, McMullen, Live Oak, Gonzales, Wilson, Atascosa and Webb Counties; the takeaway and Gulf Coast-bound lines that cross Bexar, Guadalupe and Comal Counties; and the intrastate lines crossing Kendall and Medina Counties in the Hill Country. We also represent owners whose existing easements are being used beyond their terms — a second line laid under a single-line easement, surface facilities outside the strip, or a restoration that never happened.

Frequently Asked Questions