What about statue of Limitations?
Interesting!
I read the link , the BK is secondary at best ,, the real problem is that ownership of the land was lost due to bad recordkeeping by the BK trustee resulting in wild deeds ,, oil and gas companies had to escrow millions for unknown owners of the land... the real owners needed to be located or the money would be forfeited to the state.
Early mineral severance in Dickenson County, VA in which the draftsman of a deed reserved coal, oil, etc., but not natural gas. Hence, the natural gas passed with the surface estate.
When coalbed methane gas began to be produced commercially in the mid-to-late 1980s in southwest Virginia, the caselaw was unclear on whether the coalbed methane gas would be owned by the coal owner (like in PA) or the surface owner. Many years later, the VA Supreme Court ruled that the owner of the coalbed methane was the natural gas owner.
A couple of large tracts where there were a number of cbm wells, for which royalties had been escrowed due to the ownership issue, was the basis for this dispute. On these tracts, Yellow Poplar Lumber Company, the debtor in the 1920s bankruptcy suit, never conveyed the two tracts. When the tracts were conveyed by the 1920s bankruptcy trustee, he failed to convey the coalbed methane, only the surface estate. Therefore, title to the methane remained behind in the stockholders of the bankrupt, and now long defunct company.
A very unusual set of facts that created a very tricky title scenario.