Most freehold owners are not trained in oil and gas reservoir engineering. As a result, the individual freehold owners of split title natural gas typically rely on their oil company-lessees to properly allocate production between themselves and PanCanadian Petroleum Limited ("PanCanadian" now "Encana"), the successor to the CPR. What many owners of split title natural gas fail to recognize is that, in most circumstances, their oil company-lessee will also have leased petroleum from the CPR or Encana.

For almost 100 years,  the CPR and its successors have prescribed and enforced petroleum lease agreements on split title lands which require lessees of petroleum to pay them royalties on hydrocarbons which are owned by the natural gas owner (see "1920's - The Turner Valley Controversy", "1950-1953 – Borys v. CPR & Imperial Oil Limited", "1990's - The Ownership Trial"). Very few wells are economic to operate if an oil company must pay two sets of royalty payments on the same production, and oil companies operating wells on split title lands face a conflict - on the one hand is a large and powerful corporation demanding a royalty on something it doesn't own - on the other hand is an individual freehold owner who typically doesn't have the technical and legal background to know what he owns, nor the financial resources to enforce his ownership rights if he understood them.

Who do you think gets paid in most instances?

The split title problem raises serious issues concerning the behaviour of certain oil and gas companies and whether those who are entrusted with regulating the industry and enforcing the laws are more interested in covering up the stench of industry misdeeds than fulfilling their obligations. Because the split title problem encapsulates the difficulties faced by owners of freehold mineral rights in Canada, the issues involved have been set forth in considerable detail.

(See "History of the Split-Title Problem" for additional information.)