## Facts

- Indiana enacted a 1893 statute regulating oil and natural-gas wells, requiring gas or oil to be confined in the well or proper receptacles and prohibiting escape into the open air beyond two days after discovery.
- The Ohio Oil Company operated multiple natural-gas wells in Indiana’s gas-producing region.
- The State alleged Ohio Oil knowingly allowed large quantities of gas to escape into the open air beyond the statutory two-day period, wasting millions of cubic feet daily and impairing a common underground supply.
- The State alleged Ohio Oil intended to continue the waste indefinitely unless restrained.
- The State asserted that depletion of the gas supply would cause broad public and economic harm, including threatening manufacturing enterprises and employment dependent on the gas supply.
- The State, through the Attorney General, sought an injunction to compel compliance and prevent ongoing waste.

## Issues

1. Whether Indiana’s 1893 restriction on allowing natural gas to escape into the open air is a valid exercise of the State’s police power consistent with property rights and due process.
2. Whether the State’s allegations of ongoing, intentional waste and public injury justified equitable relief by injunction.

## Decision

- The Indiana Supreme Court reversed the trial court’s refusal to grant an injunction.
- The court held the 1893 statute was constitutional as a police-power measure preventing waste of a valuable, shared natural resource.
- The court held the State’s complaint stated grounds for injunctive relief to restrain continued statutory violations.
- The cause was remanded for further proceedings consistent with granting effective equitable relief.

## Legal Principles

- The State may regulate the production and handling of fugacious resources like natural gas to prevent waste that threatens a common supply shared across adjoining lands.
- Police-power regulation that restricts wasteful use of property, while leaving lawful extraction and beneficial use available, generally does not constitute a taking or deprivation of property without due process.
- Equity may issue an injunction to prevent a continuing public injury where legal remedies are inadequate, particularly when the threatened harm involves ongoing depletion of a natural resource and affects the public welfare.
- A landowner’s or operator’s interest in oil and gas is qualified by the migratory character of the resource and by reasonable state regulation aimed at conserving the resource for lawful use.

## Conclusion

The court upheld Indiana’s anti-waste gas-well statute as a permissible police-power regulation and ordered injunctive enforcement because the alleged ongoing, intentional release of gas threatened irreparable public harm and could not be adequately addressed through ordinary legal remedies.


State v. Ohio Oil Co., 150 Ind. 21, 49 N.E. 809 (Ind. 1898)