Inland Litigation Under The Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act

This article was originally published inTexas Journal of Oil, Gas, & Energy Law. Any opinions in this article are not those of Winston & Strawn or its clients. The opinions in this article are the authors' opinions only.

For the first 50 years of offshore oil and gas development, coastal states exercised exclusive jurisdiction over their adjacent seabed. But as deposits proved to be significant, the federal-state dispute over control of these "tidelands" became a "question of major importance." In United States v. California (1947), the U.S. Supreme Court entered the fray, declaring that "the Federal Government rather than the state has paramount rights" in the tidelands and "full dominion over the resources of the soil under that water area, including oil." This "effectively eviscerated coastal states' claims to ownership of offshore resources."