I have a friend with a Genesis easement in his back yard. The pipeline is abandoned in-place & he wants to arrange to have the easement extinguished & the pipes removed. He's tried contacting them on his own but keeps getting passed along and now they aren't responding at all. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I am also posting this on the Job Network and Real Estate boards.

Thanks!

Do they have any legal requirement to do this, or is your buddy just hoping they will? I'm not asking that to be snarky.

Yup, this request has been put at the very bottom of their list of priorities. By bottom, I mean not in the list at all.

The point to my question was that if they have a legal requirement to do any of this then tell you friend to call the Railroad Commission, and let them know that Genesis is falling down on the job.

I'm more familiar with power line easements, but I believe the situations are similar with pipe.

It depends greatly on the initial terms of expiration for the easement, and sadly, a lot of older deals are "perpetual." Even if the easement is expired, it's my understanding that the landowner is then the one who's financially responsible for removing the pipe.

Regardless, this is not going to be a cheap venture for your friend if he needs the pipe gone. If he doesn't really need it gone but the easement is still enforceable, he could possibly seek a license to regain rights to the easement and indemnify the pipeline company of any safety responsibilities. I know utility companies will sell licenses to use their easements, I would assume pipe works the same. But even with this option, he'll have to pay for the legal fees to draft the license. They're not gonna go out of their way to do it.

Often pipeline companies would prefer to abandon in place. If you have to take the pipe out, that can often open you up to expensive remediation, and in some cases, can reveal toxic pollution, etc. that has to be dealt with; hence, most prefer to abandon in place and let it lie.