Christopher “Chris” W. Eckels

Christopher “Chris” W. Eckels is an attorney based in Salt Lake City, Utah, who prepares drilling, division order, and acquisition title opinions for oil and gas clients, and represents both operators and non-operators in regulatory matters before the Utah Board of Oil, Gas and Mining.

Lifelong ties to energy development

Born to two geologists and raised in the heart of Utah’s Uinta Basin, the oil and gas industry has been a fixture in Chris’ life since birth. At age 11 he was pulling documents in the Uintah County Recorder’s Office for a lease broker. Throughout his teenage years he worked part time for his father’s company, a small operator active in the Uinta Basin. After graduating from Northwestern University, he abstracted title on several thousand acres in Delaware County, NY, for anticipated expansion of the Marcellus Shale play into Upstate New York. 

He later returned to Utah and became a full-time independent field landman primarily focused on abstracting title for oil and gas clients in Duchesne and Uintah Counties. When several of the most respected title attorneys in Utah formed a new mineral title firm in Salt Lake City, they hired Chris as their first Title Paralegal.

Over the next four years, he learned to examine and chain title, calculate net revenue interests, prepare division orders, and plot metes-and-bounds tracts, and helped to prepare title opinion comments and requirements, before leaving to attend law school at the University of Utah’s S.J. Quinney College of Law. He maintains close ties to the Uinta Basin, as well as contacts at the Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation.

Actionable title opinions

Chris helps clients manage risk by preparing original/supplemental/limited acquisition/drilling/division order title opinions that identify title defects that could create liabilities and advise on options to mitigate or resolve them. He also occasionally directly handles title curative, such as curative probates.

Multi-jurisdictional experience

Licensed in Utah, Chris has also examined title and prepared opinions for fee, State (e.g., in Utah, both SITLA and DFFSL-administered lands), Federal (Bureau of Land Management), and Tribal and allotted Indian lands in Colorado, Montana, New York, North Dakota, Texas, and Wyoming (under the supervision of duly licensed supervising attorneys). The majority of his title experience has been in the Rockies, including the Uinta, Powder River, and Williston Basins, and the Mancos, Niobrara, and Bakken shale plays; he has also worked in the Paradox, Piceance, Greater Green River, Denver-Julesburg, Appalachian, TX-LA-MS Salt, and Fort Worth Basins and the Marcellus, Haynesville, and Barnett shale plays.

Representative work

Chris’ lifelong proximity to the oil and gas industry and close ties to geologists and operations personnel have, on multiple occasions, given him technical insight into oil and gas operations that falls outside the typical experience of most title attorneys, allowing him to better advise clients. 

For example:

• Understanding technical aspects of how rigs operate informed his interpretation of unconventional language in lease provisions to determine whether a lease had expired or remained held by operations and/or production.
• Understanding physical and technical attributes of sands used as proppant in hydraulic fracturing allowed him to advise on the likelihood that Utah courts would deem sand deposits potentially suitable for use as frac sand to belong to the owner of the surface estate or the underlying severed mineral estate.

Additionally, Chris stays alert to opportunities that may be beneficial to his clients. While preparing a limited-scope title examination related to a client’s acquisition of complex Utah mineral rights, he discovered the rights being acquired were derived through inheritance, and an equal quantum of interest had been inherited by several of the local sellers’ elderly relatives overseas. He inquired whether his client would be interested in also acquiring these additional interests; negotiated with the non-English-speaking foreign sellers, including facilitating translation services and referring them to local Utah counsel for representation; and handled multiple related curative probates to clear decades and multiple generations of clouded title.

BOGM regulatory work

Chris has represented both petitioners and respondents in regulatory matters before the Utah Board of Oil, Gas and Mining, including both opposing and requesting spacing orders.  He prepares regulatory pleadings (e.g., Requests for Agency Action) and helps both expert and lay witnesses prepare to testify at hearings, including advising clients on preparing hearing exhibits. He has also advised on enforcing orders issued by the Board.

Holistic view of energy sector

Chris holds a holistic view toward the energy demands of modern life, and fosters an “all-of-the-above” approach to meeting our energy needs.  He is interested in codevelopment of lands suited to both renewable energy development and oil and gas development, and has ties on the renewables side of the energy sector (particularly geothermal), as well as the EV charging infrastructure industry.

Other legal experience

Chris has worked previously as a civil litigator, handling matters in areas such as insurance defense, contract disputes, property boundary disputes, and victims’ rights work.  During law school, he interned with the in-house counsel for professional soccer clubs Real Salt Lake, Utah Royals FC, and Real Monarchs.