Introduction

Owners of oil and gas rights often want to transfer all or part of their rights and obligations to other parties. They transfer these rights and obligations for a number of reasons; including to raise capital and to spread risk. They use different kinds of contracts to carry out such transfers; such as farmout, participation, swap and transfer agreements. They employ a number of legal mechanisms in these contracts to effectuate these transfers; one of which is the splitting or bifurcation of title in the oil and gas rights. Bifurcation of title results in the splitting of the ...