Now I am confused. We also took our draft to the bank in August and sent in our lease to Shale. We were told that it was 90 BUSINESS DAYS that they had to pay. We sent ours in around the 20th of August and have anticipated that we will be due the week before Christmas. I am not sure that if Vera sent her lease in in August that she is due yet. Just sayin’.
Send the registered letter to the lessee, you will find their name and address near the top of your lease. I’m sorry if I confused you in my posts, I was trying to make reply to more than one similar post.
RW,
We took our draft to the bank in August and mailed off the lease. Our bank manager said they would keep an eye on it for us. Is there anything else we have to do except wait?
My problem is not the 90 days, it is the fact that they said do not take it to the bank so it has not even been presented for payment yet but they filed the lease at the Courthouse in Sept. They said they would send a check and then I was to send the draft back. No Check!!
Vera, there is nothing wrong with taking the draft to the bank. Taking the draft to the bank will not foul things up. Your lessee can give you a check in lieu of the draft at any time and the draft will be a dead issue. The only thing placing the draft with your bank will do is start the clock ticking to when they are supposed to pay you. If your lessee is dealing squarely with you they have had alot of extra time already. If they can’t do what they need to do in an additional 90 banking days, about 4 1/4 months, then they probably are just waiting on the value of your lease to go up or until they can sell your lease at a profit and never will pay you until it does or until they get it sold which could be a year from now or never.
Vicki, yes it’s working/banking days. 90 working days is about 4 1/4 months.
Viki, in your position I can see nothing that can be done but wait for the payment to come or the draft to expire. The draft is a contract, the original controling contract. If the draft expires and you have not been paid I would search to see if the lease is recorded and if it is not ask the landman/lessee to return your lease. If the lease is recorded and you have not been paid by draft expiration, record a statement of non-payment, do everything in a timely manner, don’t put things off. Phone calls are fine but also send letters with tracking for the same subject. The lawyers say time is of the essence in an oil and gas lease and that applies to you also. Good luck to you. When I first started I didn’t know what to do. I waited and studied the situation. Because I did not know what to do and because I did not act fast enough, I am now embroiled in a lawsuit that I could have easily headed off if I had known what to do and acted in time.
Has anoyone heard any updates on the Apache well? If they have fraced it? If so, does it look like a producer?
Daniels County Leader said that fracking was to start on 6th,7th or 8th(Nov) but who knows . As to what kind of producer they seems to be keeping it close to the vest.
Thanks RW.
I’m kind of surprised that they are playing games with some people since our experience was way different than the ones mentioned in the previous comments.
Shale has returned the bank draft to my bank with the explanation they are going to issue a check directly. They also moved the payment date out a month.
I really am surprised that they can do that… Any comments?
thanks r w . is also possible they are trying to squirrel away some acreage in another company so to as “put apache over the barrel” and charge them much much more to acquire the acreage needed to complete a spacing?
Has anyone heard anything about apaches activity up there?
Just a local observer’s observations. Apache is drilling exploring away on their second pad. Work is being done on the development at the first site as well. there was a workover or some type of derrick(rig) there this am when I drove by. The site is lighted brightly at night as well, so I am guessing they are still working 24/7 there. An access road and building of there 3rd pad has begun in the last few days. It is at a site approximately in between the first two sites.
Thanks Lee. Its good to know that they are poking holes. Maybe apache will take it slower than the the rush back in ND so as not to overwhelm Scobey.
Sharlie, they can if you let them and you sent them the executed lease. It may be too late to take back control. I would contact a lawyer immediately. It looks like you are on the path I took because I didn’t know what to do either and you will have a choice to just let it go or costly court battle. The draft itself was a contract, the original contract. Acceptance of your lease and payment was conditional. If they have recorded your lease they can claim that was acceptance and the mere possibility of future royalty was enough consideration to make the lease binding. They may not need to pay you the bonus to hold your lease if it has been recorded. If Shale has the money, what possible reason could they have to not honor the draft? It was Shale’s draft, Shale sent it, it’s the way Shale paid for your lease, it’s the way they have done and will continue to do business, why didn’t Shale just honor/pay the draft? Why would Shale push the payment date out another month when the deal is supposed to already be done and the dfart has been returned unpaid? There may be no way to protect yourself but if there is it may not last long. I would hate for you to have to go through what I have. I recommend you talk to a lawyer and ask him how you can protect yourself right away. Sharlie, I love to be on this forum, telling people they already have wells, telling them their wells production or how surrounding wells have done, but the real reason I am here is because I was/am in the situation you are right now. The reason I am here is to stop what happened to me from happening to someone else. I am not absolutely certain that the exact same thing is going to happen to you but I see huge potential that it could. I don’t want it to happen to you.
Billy Bob, there has been alot of leasing, some of it must have gone off without a hitch. Unfortunately that does not mean all of it goes without a hitch.
we are a group of 12 sharing same minerals. our group recently came to an agreement with shale. however 3 members did not recieve contracts. shale says they signed with augustus may. these 3 are my relatives and they say they have not signed anything with anyone. at this time my sister checked d.c. courthouse and no company has filed on their minerals. i checked the next week and still no filing. augustus may worked for shale from june till end of august. apache says that augustus may was not authorized to aquire leases for them. why is shale not interested in these 3 but sent contracts to the other 9 members who share in these same minerals??
Dustin, Landmen are human and make mistakes and that could be what has happened here. I believe that there is also the possibility that Shale could want a position in the spacing but not want to lease everyone. Later, leases that were accepted could be traded for cash and an override on royalty. In my opinion Shale never had the resources to exploit the minerals and there never was a point at which Shale was not going to assign the leases to someone else, as they did to Apache. I was reading just in the last couple months that Shale said they were not going to lease anymore, a statement that I think was designed to get people to lease and not wait to see what prices may do in the near future, the fact that Shale is still leasing should tell you something about how what they say and their actions differ. Point being that you have to take anything a land company or landman says with a whole shaker of salt. Shale has never drilled a well and I wouldn’t believe that Shale’s leasing is anything other than speculative until they do. Shale could just be spreading their risk by not leasing all of you. If you haven’t already sent in your leases, you could as a family band together and tell them it’s all or none. That would be the only leverage I see that you could use to get the other family members leased.