Continuing the discussion from Ovintiv | Section 29, Block 31, T1N | Howard County:
We lease to Ovintive elsewhere in Howard county. Mostly OK. But there have been issues. The main one is a decided reluctance to follow the black-letter wording of our contract, which specifies in no uncertain terms that our lease comprises 30 acres, no matter what. This is a standard precaution in lease contracts. Nonetheless, due to title issues on the production unit they arbitrarily cut us back to about 26 acres while things get resolved. BTW, our title is exact and the property has been in the family for nearly a century with no title disputes. So we should not be involved in this matter in the first place.
Ovintiv acknowledges that our contract specifies that they owe us royalties for 30 acres, whatever any title disputes. The excuse seems to be that the matter is “still in the hands of the attorneys” (as if there were any doubt what the contract says) and that they are short-handed due to lay-offs. But meanwhile they have been sitting on the relevant royalty payments for over a year.