In this suit, brought to recover his share of oil royalties, the plaintiff challenged the validity, under the contract clause and the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Federal Constitution, of the Well-Spacing Act of the State of Oklahoma (Chap. 59, Okla. Sess. Laws 1935) and an order made thereunder by the Corporation Commission of that State. The Supreme Court of the State, affirming the judgment of the District Court with a modification immaterial here, sustained the validity of the statute and order.
The Corporation Commission fixed the boundaries of the common source of oil supply in the North Wellston area in Lincoln County, Oklahoma, so as to include 520 acres, and authоrized ten-acre well-spacing units within that area. The well in question is in the apрroximate center of one of these ten-acre units. That unit consists of 614 acres which lie in tract “A” and 3% acres in tract “B,” these tracts being in separate ownership. The well is located on tract “A.” The statute, § 4 (c), provides:
“In thе event a producing well, or wells, is completed upon a unit where there are two or more separately owned *378 tracts, any royalty owner, or group of royalty owners, holding the royalty interest under a separately owned tract, shall share in one-eighth (%)' of all the production from the well or wеlls drilled within the unit in the proportion that the acreage of their separately owned tract bears to the entire acreage of the unit.”
Under that рrovision, as construed by the state court, the owners of the mineral rights in the 3% aсres of the drilling unit are permitted to share with the plaintiff, and his co-owners of thе mineral rights in the other 6% acres of the unit, the oil and gas produced from the wеll although it is located entirely upon the surface of the 6% acre traсt. Plaintiff contends that this distribution among the owners of the 3% acres works an unconstitutiоnal deprivation of his property and an impairment of his contractual rights. The Corporation Commission found as follows:
“That the said well as above described is located in the approximate center of a 10-acrе tract of land, and that taking into consideration the depth of the well now рroducing in said common source of supply, the thickness, porosity, and pеrmeability of the producing sand, the nature and character of the resеrvoir energy, the formations encountered in the drilling of the well, and the history and рroductive characteristics of wells in other common sources of suрply which have similar formations, .and from other geological and scientifiс information and data as shown by the records, the Commission finds that a well-spaсing and drilling unit of 10 acres and of uniform size should be established in the said North Wellston pool; that the same would tend to effect the proper drainage of oil from said pool, and would result in uniform withdrawal and in the greatest ultimate recovery of oil, and would best conserve reservoir energy, and would proteсt the relative rights of the leaseholders and royalty owners in said common sоurce of supply.”
*379
It is admitted that the Commission made its findings and order after due hearing. The evidence underlying its findings is not in the record.. Accordingly, as the state court sаid, it must be assumed “that the source of supply of the well in question is common to the land adjoining it and that said pool underlies not only the 6% acres of land on which the well is located but that it also extends beneath the
3%
acre tract.” In thаt view the state court applied well settled principles in denying plaintiff’s сontention under the Fourteenth Amendment
(Ohio Oil Co.
v.
Indiana,
In the light of our previous decisions, the plaintiff has failed to raise a substantial federal question and the appeal is dismissed for the want of jurisdiction.
Hannis Distilling Co.
v.
Baltimore,
Dismissed.