## Facts

- Beech Aircraft Corp. purchased natural gas from interstate pipelines and injected it into the depleted Stalnaker gas reservoir through wells on Beech’s land for later industrial use.
- The Andersons owned an adjoining farm overlying the same reservoir; Avanti Petroleum, Inc. held an oil and gas lease on the Anderson tract.
- Beech had no lease, license, permit, or other authorization to store gas beneath the Anderson tract.
- Avanti drilled a producing well on the Anderson tract into the Stalnaker reservoir.
- The parties stipulated that the gas produced from Avanti’s well was gas Beech had previously purchased and injected for storage and that it had migrated within the reservoir.
- The Andersons and Avanti sued to quiet title to the gas and also sought damages (including trespass and slander of title) and an accounting.
- The district court granted partial summary judgment to plaintiffs on quiet title, ruling they could produce non-native gas injected by Beech that had entered beneath their property.
- Beech took an interlocutory appeal limited to the quiet-title/ownership ruling.

## Issues

1. Whether injected, non-native natural gas retains the injector’s ownership after it migrates within a common reservoir beneath neighboring land where the injector holds no storage rights.
2. Whether Kansas underground gas storage statutes protect the injector’s ownership absent compliance or acquisition of storage rights under the affected tract.
3. Whether plaintiffs were entitled to partial summary judgment quieting title to the gas they produced from their well.

## Decision

- The Kansas Supreme Court affirmed the partial summary judgment for the Andersons and Avanti on the quiet-title claim.
- Because Beech had no legal right to use the subsurface under the Anderson tract for storage, Beech could not assert ownership against plaintiffs for gas that migrated under that tract.
- The court treated the migrated injected gas beneath the Anderson tract as subject to the rule of capture, allowing plaintiffs to acquire title by lawful production.

## Legal Principles

- Under the rule of capture, a landowner/lessee generally acquires title to natural gas by reducing it to possession through lawful drilling and production from the tract.
- Injected storage gas may remain the personal property of the injector within a lawfully established and controlled storage area, but that protection depends on securing storage rights (by agreement or through the statutory framework).
- A party that injects gas for storage without obtaining rights to store beneath neighboring land assumes the risk that migrated gas beneath that land may be produced and owned by the neighboring landowner/lessee.

## Conclusion

The court held that, absent statutory compliance or other rights to store gas under adjoining land, an injector cannot prevent neighboring owners and their lessees from producing migrated injected gas; once lawfully produced from the neighboring tract, the gas belongs to the producer under the rule of capture.


Anderson v. Beech Aircraft Corp., 699 P.2d 1023 (Kan. 1985)