Ran across an easement for a pipe line easement document that has an Exhibit plat by a Texas RPLS. The note at the bottom is a disclaimer.
"This plat represents a proposed pipeline easement and does not represent a true boundary survey. The footages and ties shown are from lines of occupation, not from actual property corners. All landowner information, property lines and descriptions are shown based on information supplies by client."
In the words of Larry, the cable guy, "GITTER DONE".
Also on the same tract there are exhibits in pipe line documents that were prepared by a firm in Oklahoma called XXXXX DESIGN without any seal or signature of any responsible person on it.
This oil and gas stuff seems to be a "free for all".
Many pipelines projects are done with aerial photography and no preliminary surveying.
Ties from the pipeline to property corners are scaled and field notes are written.
I saw a local surveyor with four crews was told by the oil company that the pipeline
contractor (without an RPLS) would stake and as-built the pipeline.
Fine and dandy, but when the plat in the recorded document is a part of the record for location how can this stuff be OK.
The answer seems to me to be that it depends upon whether metes and bounds descriptions were prepared. Chapter 1071 of the Occupations code provides as follows:
Sec. 1071.004. APPLICATION OF CHAPTER. This chapter does not require the use of a registered professional land surveyor to establish an easement or a construction estimate that does not involve the monumentation, delineation, or preparation of a metes and bounds description.
In other words, if the easement grant was general in nature, i.e. the right to build a pipeline along a course as "now staked out" with the easement to follow the pipeline "as constructed", then I'd think a person could argue that the staking of the route of the pipeline was not professional land surveying.
On the other hand, if the easement grant defined the location of the easement by metes and bounds or by reference to a map, then that was professional land surveying and all of the minimum standards apply.
Kent, I think you hit the nail on the head.
No description was written or at least it does not affect in the record. A lawyer prepared blanket easement is an exhibit in the same document, which basically says that a pipe line in to be laid along a 20 feet wide strip across a tract recorded......bla-bla-bla.
So I say, why even to go to the effort of placing the plat in the record.
> A lawyer prepared blanket easement is an exhibit in the same document, which basically says that a pipe line in to be laid along a 20 feet wide strip across a tract recorded......bla-bla-bla.
> So I say, why even to go to the effort of placing the plat in the record.
I guess that it serves the purpose of generally identifying the vicinity of the pipeline with the idea that a person who really wants to know where the pipeline is can go out on the ground and see the markers along the route.
If Farmer Brown was led to believe that the pipeline would be somewhere in the back pasture on the South side of the tank, then even a crude sketch would document that condition of the grant.
I've seen several pipeline easement plats produced over the last several years that have line tables to the second and hundredth from Well No. x to Well No. y (in a general graphic sense) across seven properties which are drawn with all the precision of a tax appraisal map. No way to retrace the calls, no calls for monuments (defining the easement or the properties being crossed). No bearing relation. Basically just crap.
I've never turned one in for violations of monumentation 663.17(b) and 663.17(c) or lacking proper description 663.19(b)or bearing relation 663.19(c) as I doubt the board would do much against it. There's a lot of money driving those fast pipeline easements.
This is one reason I have little faith in government regulation to protect the public interest. Too much evidence to the contrary.
