Over the past year, a once obscure issue took on huge significance in the oil patch.  To wit, do gas-gathering contracts between “midstream” service companies and production companies (E&Ps) constitute real property interests?  As Reed Smith notes in a recent client memo, a “gathering agreement refers to a contract that provides for collecting gas or other commodities at the point of production, and for moving it through a pipeline system to a junction with a pipeline’s primary transmission system”.