Our original lease/Memorandum for interests in Doddridge County WV was done in January 2014, and now they want us to sign an amendment to the Memorandum. Problem is the amendment goes quit a bit beyond the "secondary term" and "right of first refusal" language the cover letter claims they need to add to the original Memorandum.
1) It asks us to "declare that the Lease is a valid and subsisting oil and gas lease..." which seems like a trick to have us accept something to which we might not otherwise be bound (under the law and terms of the lease we signed).
2) It also requires us to "execute, acknowledge and deliver any additional instruments..." Again, something that was not in the original lease, but to which we would be bound if we sign the amendment.
Really annoying to us because we already paid an attorney to negotiate and review the original paperwork. Now they put this in front of us and say will not pay royalty until we sign and they are not offering any consideration for signing the amendment, even though the amendment states that we acknowledge receipt of consideration.
Has anyone else had this experience? It seems highly suspicious that Antero would have not been up-to-date with the requirements of information that must be included in a memorandum of lease at the time they prepared one for us to sign together with the lease. If the law changed later, it seems that any previously recorded memoranda should be grandfathered in.
Marlene,
You are not the only one that has had this experience and others have been threatened to have their royalty suspended if they did not sign. I am NOT an attorney, but would suggest you not sign, in addition to contacting your attorney and advising them of the situation.
Cheers
Thank you for your reply! I appreciate the help from this forum. I'm pretty disillusioned with Antero, especially after learning on this site that they were still writing leases with no cost deductions even soon after our attorney tried and failed to get that for us. Their landman swore they would never go for that, and told us Antero was about to sue to take the interests of the holdouts (which they did end up doing about a month after we signed) so we felt compelled to sign what we knew was a bad deal, at least with respect to the costs deduction.
Marlene,
Again, I am NOT an attorney in any fashion. However, if you are dissatisfied with the attorney you initially used, feel free to drop me a note on this site and I will give you the name of attorneys that I have worked with and am very happy with.
For the lease to be subsisting, there should be production. If there is production I would sue them to make them pay my royalty.
The Deal is the Deal. You don't get a do over and Antero is not entitled by law to a do over.
Antero is in breach if they do not pay royalty in accordance with the lease. I hope your lawyer didn't totally fail you in the regards as to when royalty is to be paid. If your lease is vague as to when royalty must be paid, then you need to find what state law says on the subject.
Ditto what WV Mineral Owner says. You need your attorney, or WV Mineral Owner's attorney, to look at this and tell you what is going on. One good thing about using an attorney who does a lot of oil and gas lease work in WV is that such an attorney knows what the companies are up to, etc. Sounds like they are up to their tricks again.
Thanks, Mr. Kennedy, for that clarification and information. Very helpful.
Mr. (or Ms) Kennedy:
Our lease does not say when the royalties have to be paid. We did not receive the first division order until November 2015, about 16 months after the first pool started pumping, and still haven't signed and returned it because we were waiting to see if everything lines up on the maps and correlates with the net mineral acres the landman said we had. The division order analysts have been good about sending the maps and DOPs, and we now have DOs and the recorded DOPs for three of the total four pools we expect to be in. But I have to say it seems pretty bad that they pump for 1-2 years before sending a DO, and maybe we got put last in line because our lease was silent on start of royalty payments.
I'm about to send in one of the DOs so we'll see how it goes from there; if they don't pay then I am steeled to fight.
Thank you for taking the time to respond. This forum has been a great help!
Marlene
Nancy,
It is frustrating, especially when my husband was well aware of the types of shenanigans going on when he used to visit his grandmother in WV as a child. Appreciate your comments and time.
Marlene
Ms. Cerchi, it's Mr, thanks.
I'm sorry to hear that your lease is silent on when royalty is to be paid. I believe your lawyer failed you there. Fallback would be state law (if any) that states when royalty must be paid.
The reason why the amendment has language where you must admit to being paid consideration is because if you were executing the amendment for free, you could possibly change your mind in the future. The consideration language is there so you can't change your mind at a later date.
If I was told I needed to ratify this amendment to get paid royalty that was already promised, I would be concerned that I would ratify the amendment and they still wouldn't pay. If they don't pay and always get what they want anyway, why would they start paying? Because they are trustworthy, nice people? If they were trustworthy, nice people, wouldn't they be paying you now based on the previous contract? Something to ponder.
Mr. Kennedy,
The DO says our payment is in suspension with reason code " SUSP-need signed DO," so we'll soon see what they do after they receive our signed DO.
We know the trickery of "consideration," which is one of the reasons we won't sign the phoney-baloney amendment. Thanks again for your very informative answers. I'm sure many others are benefiting from them, just as I have by trolling through the various discussion on this site. What a minefield we navigate.
Marlene
Ms. Cerchi, we could have a pleasant chat and if I said something ambiguous it would become clear from context or I would probably explain it in greater detail.
The operator could pay you royalty without a signed and returned division order...if they chose to do so. There is no law or regulation that says that they can't.
Your title was checked to the standard of "buy title" when you leased. Most likely there was a drilling title opinion and then a final title opinion before division orders were sent out. They just want you to return a signed division order saying you agree with their calculations so that in the future if it turns out they were wrong, they can point at you and say you were at fault also for agreeing. It's about avoiding liability.
There may in fact (almost certainly is) be a law or regulation that says they do not have to pay you royalty without a signed returned division order.
This would be all the excuse they need to NOT pay you what they believe they owe you.
Is it any wonder they have to go to court so often because people do not want to do business with them?
Mr. Kennedy,
Thanks again for the extra info and your good point. I understand they want to cover themselves by having us sign the DO, even though there is nothing in the lease that would require us to do so. Probably , as you write, because it is already in the law so they don't have to put it in. The DO lines up with what the landman said my husband owned, so that is what we go on. I'll circle back with an update next I hear something.
Marlene