Paul Yale is Board Certified in Oil, Gas & Mineral Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. He has decades of experience in both the domestic and international oil and gas industry, including 27 years working in various capacities with ExxonMobil Corporation and its predecessors. Before retiring from ExxonMobil in 2007, Paul served as Manager of Land for the company’s U.S. Production Organization responsible for overseeing all land activities in the U.S. lower 48. Upon retiring from ExxonMobil, Paul immediately re-entered private law practice focusing exclusively on oil and gas title, transactional and dispute resolution matters. He is a licensed attorney in eight states and has worked in virtually every major U.S. oil and gas basin, both onshore and offshore.
During the course of Paul’s career he has negotiated and documented countless numbers of upstream oil and gas transactions, including purchase and sale agreements, oil and gas leases, joint operating agreements, exploration agreements, unit agreements, gas sales contracts, master services agreements, drilling contracts, and many more. He regularly prepares oil and gas drilling, division order and acquisition title opinions in Texas, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma and in other states in which he is licensed.
A certified arbitrator and mediator, Paul is experienced in guiding parties to amicable dispute resolutions in cases involving upstream oil and gas contracts and complex title issues. He is frequently called on to provide expert witness testimony in litigation involving many types of complex oil and gas issues.
Paul is a regular author and speaker on a variety of oil and gas legal topics including title opinions, operating agreements, and hydraulic fracturing. He is a co-author and editor of LexisNexis’s Hydraulic Fracturing Law and Practice (2017 and 2019 editions).