I have recently been sent a lease offer from a Landman on behalf of Antero to lease my interest of 46.66000 Gross acres which it seems is 0.00326. They offered a signing bonus of $500 and 17% royalties. There are several other people who have interest as well it seems but most are distant relatives I have never met. I do not live in WV either.
I’ve been doing some reading on the forum and from what I’ve gathered some of the things I need to counter with are: No Post Production Costs, larger bonus and higher percentage of royalties, No automatic renewal of lease (I don’t think this is in the offer anyway, but not sure). Not sure what else so if anyone could offer advice. I am not sure if it is worth hiring an attorney since it seems my part is small. I have included images of the offer if anyone would be willing to check them out and let me know if there is anything that is extremely important that I am missing (I am sure there is a lot). Thank you for your time.
I have included a link to a .pdf file with the offer documents as it would not let me upload it here.
My husband rec’d roughly the same offer.ie: relatives we never knew we had, we don’t live in WV either, same options: $500.00 signing bonus, 17% royalties on 10.750(gross) 0.00006 (net) etc. We laughed & said “IT’S FOUND MONEY” so we just signed everything & sent it back. Not worth $ for lawyer as far as we could see. We rec’d the signing bonus “post-haste” but have not heard a word since. That was around September 30,2023. Our offer came with all the fine print regarding all the “post production mumbo-jumbo”. So far no one has been offered anything more than 17%, so that should not be a deciding factor for you. Reread your paperwork line by line, you should be seeing all youe questions answered. DON’T SPENT YOUR ROYALTIES JUST YET EITHER…READ & USE THE ROYALTY CHART…YOU PROBABLY WON’T EVE GET A NICE DINNER OUT OF THIS MESS!!!
Not trying to be rude, but why would you hire an attorney to negotiate a 0.00326 acre lease? $500.00 x 0.00326= $1.60 lease bonus which the company will lose money on in filing fees and if you hired a lawyer, theyd charge you $250+ to negotiate a $1 bonus, so youd walk away upside down give or take $249.00…
I have 1.05 acres of 181 total, in Tyler Co, and did deal with Antero (search for me to see specifics).
My total gross proceeds from Antero for Sept/Oct 2023 was over $1,800.
Do not just sign papers with any of these guys and do not sell your rights without doing research.
If given a chance, there are a lot of unscrupulous people just waiting to take advantage of newbies.
While there are obviously numerous variables between different wells, examples like yours offer the many new folks receiving purchase offers some basis for comparison.
My family also has some acreage and I will gather some data and attempt to provide a similar example.