Chesapeake has failed to pay royalties for 8 working wells on my property in LaSalle TX. They say they are now paying two months in arrears. I’ve seen no payment in three - count 'em - three months. Anyone else having this problem with Chesapeak ?
Oh yea!
My Wildhorse properties were paying well until Chesapeake took over and said that they would pay for production from two months back. November 19 check was never received and when I inquired about that a few times, I was told that my account was five digits in the red. What??
We need to band together and get them straight!
Join the club. So far this year we have had checks held 4 months out of 11, because we we were in negative balance for ad Val taxes (they say) for 2016 for 2 of those months, then because they said the BlLM changed their calculations as to our ownership % in 3 wells - this after we originally waited nearly 2 years for initial payment because we had to wait for BLM to approve the division of ownership. When I called the state agency regulating minerals they told me not to get them started on Chesapeake. They apparently have been flirting with bankruptcy for years. Can’t help but wonder…
Mickey-
I’m curious about your situation and if it is still the same situation for you. They said that we were overpaid and they recalculated our percentage as well. I found a copy of our original lease and their claim seems to be questionable.
Please update if you could please.
Thanks!
My situation is the same. Both times when we were told that our account was in the red we were given an answer as to how much we owed. In one case we even got a negative balance report. But we had a hard time reconciling those figures with what we saw when we eventually started receiving monthly checks again. Currently I have decided it is best to only communicate with them in writing. When talking to them over the phone answers are not very helpful. They either respond in techno-babble that is difficult for a lay person to translate, or use a lot of abbreviations and acronyms, or I find that I get a different answer to the same question at different times. Communicating in writing isn’t going so well either. My first letter was sent in December, certified return request. When I never received the return notification of delivery I contacted USPS. Took a while but the answer I got is that they lost the letter. I re-sent it 10 days ago via Fed-ex, it was delivered and signed for a week ago, but so far no response. We don’t live in the state where our minerals are located. We do have and oil and gas attorney in that state, but he advised us that it takes one of the larger firms who specialize in dealing in owner issues with producers, an they usually don’t get involved until they know there are many owners affected by questionable practices on the part of a producer.
Mickey,
Were your leases held by Wildhorse? There is one other person here that was with them, besides myself, that I am aware of. We need to get together and see if what they are telling us is not correct.