WOW! Thank you all for the great info! I need to get out my paperwork and see what I can find out on the Ritchie County database - or call the county, or both!
Thank you all again. Unfortunately, maybe it’s just me, but it seems like the more informed I get, the more overwhelming the whole thing is. LOL But I guess that is normal.
God bless you all.
Good plan for the LLC. Strength in numbers. Keep asking about the property, you never know when the other party might want to sell.Too bad your relatives did not keep up with things.
Me too about the more I know the more complicated it all is LOL
Sharing our experience: In June, my cousin started calling Antero to ask about a lease signed in 2014 by deceased family members. He called and left messages at 3 Denver, CO ph. #s, He called weekly for months. He never got a reply. In August, I took up the cause. I called weekly…then twice a week…then every other day, leaving messages such as “This is call number 28 from [etc.]”, No answer until 10/4, when “Sidney” finally returned the call. Their voice mail says they’ll “call back within X business days” (usu. 3 or 5 or 7 days), but their response is appalling. I believe the only reason I finally got a response was because my last message was “I have instructed our attorney to issue a ‘cease and desist’ order for any exploration based on this lease”. (We have rights on about 200 acres in Clay District.) On the other hand, another company, CNX, has been VERY forthcoming for a lease on another piece of property there. If I had my druthers, I would NOT do business with Antero.
Hi, everyone, Does anyone know the current amounts offered for royalty percentage and per acre bonus? Thanks, Jane Lyttle
Asking about Ritchie? Depends on the area but lower than it was last year.
Yes - Ritchie Co. My family was offered $1500 per acre bonus two years ago. Then heard nothing, now offering $1250. Was wondering if prices have dropped that much.
Recently it was $1750 but then more recently they said they were no longer interested in that area for now. It all depends…
Thank you for the information.
Wonder if they are ok right now with the huge amount of leases they already have? They may figure they need to drill what they have to get back to even. Who knows, if things go good they may go on another leasing frenzy sometime later. The key word is sometime…They know those mineral tracts will be there later. They also may get more legistlative rulings and more pipelines in the future. Just a thought…
We have Ritchie County mineral rights on acreage near Pennsboro and the big water plant they built - with 2 producing wells so far. We leased to Antero 3 years ago, signing bonus was $1,500/acre. Interesting, we did not get a pay-out from Antero until the wells had been producing for almost a year - but then received big checks for 12 months of production, now we receive monthly pay-outs. From the map - it looks like Antero could be dropping more wells in the area - they go down a mile or so - so maybe the wells take time to drill - we really don’t know what is happening until we receive a check in the mail - I have not found a way to get information about drilling activity that pertains to our rights (and pooling agreement), so that is a little disconcerting - we are trusting Antero to notify us when our rights apply.
Hi Randall, Do you know the name of wells you have interest in? I can give you links for places to search for some of your answers. To start, if you know the well name you can use this link WV Office of Oil and Gas well search Select Ritchie for the county and put in the well name in the Well Number place. Maybe the Well Pad place.
If you get an API number, put it in this search WV Office of Oil and Gas map Click on Attribute Search, then put the API number in that slot. Notice that the API number from the first search starts with “47” (meaning WV) but the second search starts with the rest of the number. For Ritchie, it will start 85- and then a 5 digit number. If you get a 4 digit number, put a zero at the front. On the map, lines in red represented drilled wells, probably producing ones (example in Pennsboro: 85-10296). Orange lines (example near Pennsboro: 85-10317) represent permits, and green lines (example 85-10318 south of Pennsboro) represent permits applied for but not issued yet. A handy website for Ritchie County is this one. If you want tax records, select that. If you want documents, select that. Then select Ritchie for the county and Index Search for the records since 1985. There is not an easy way to find the pooling declarations, but the only way I know is to put in Antero Resources for the search name, then go to the top row and find type and put in DEC and it will fill in DEC OF POOL. You can then examine these to see if you recognize an area. Otherwise look at each one. For the older documents, select Archive. It gets more complicated. I have written several places about how to use this; maybe you can find it. I may not have helped you exactly, but maybe this will help. Nancy
Hello Nancy, We receive our tax bills and pay them by September. Also, something we struggle with…we have tax bills that we pay that only contain mineral rights…so the parcel is listed something like 9999999…this does not tell me where the surface property is located…are you aware of how to find this so you know where the property is physically? Also on the other side of it…we have mineral rights(Doddridge Co) and I know that parcel but only find a tax ticket for surface…could be there is no mineral rights tax ticket…I think you told me this once…
Hi Kevin, About the tax tickets for Ritchie for minerals: they should start with a number for the District (I think 03 for Clay district, for example) then “9999” meaning minerals (or a fee parcel that they can’t locate on a map, long story), and then an 8 digit number that is an account number. To find where this is, you have to trace it back to when the minerals were split out, maybe around 1900 or before, not always.If you want I can help you try to do that. Ritchie deeds etc are all online. About Doddridge, I think they have “their own way of doing things” and sometimes do not list minerals with surface or do not even list minerals at all until they are drilled and producing (so I have been told.) You might have in interest in both minerals and surface on that Doddridge interest. Some of their records are online, some not. I can help you get started, and if you need to look at the actual records, those that are not online, you probably will have to drive over to West Union to the courthouse, or hire somebody. .
When in Ritchie County recently, we located the physical location of family land, sold long ago but still retaining minerals rights, by cross-referencing the tax receipts with other records in the courthouse, including deeds through time (with differing descriptions of land location), tax maps, and a small file of index cards in the Assessor’s office. Some of these records are not online. We then took our info and drove around the countryside all week, knocking on doors, etc., and confirming with nearby residents where the land plots were. We found no central or definitive record which told us where to look. Since W.Va. doesn’t use the “township and range” national BLM system, you must rely on each county’s “map district map”. Each larger district (Clay, Union, etc., in Ritchie County) has smaller sections numbered 1 through 20 which narrows your search to a few square miles.