THIS IS FOR RITCHIE COUNTY
Rob. My personal answer would be " who cares". I’ll explain. From experience I know that one of the two major companies in the area absolutely refuses to pay a bonus. Another big player will pay $200-$400 if pushed. I say who cares because the important thing is to get your land in a unit and drilled. Example. We leased 140 acres into a secondary flood plain unit for oil–3000 total acres in Wetzel. (they have not started producing the oil as yet). We didn’t know it but they drilled two Marcellus wells in that area. 70 acres of our land is in one 650+ unit and the other 70 acres is in the second unit. They paid us one check for one unit and stopped production for some reason. We only have a 1/6 interest in those 140 acres. They are only doing partial production on that second well and we are getting around $9000/month. I don’t know if that is bad or good, but seems good to us and if you do the math, you can see why you want your land drilled. If they are just leasing to hold onto your land for a few years, maybe a different story. Worry about the terms (no deductions) and the royalty rate, if you can get that higher in the amendment.
Rob
Just to clarify, I am speaking below of amendments to add a pooling clause etc. to an existing lease and referring to certain companies willingness to pay bonus money on these amendments. Our situation was a full lease with bonus, but the end results are the same if drilled. Others may have had better luck with amendment bonus money.
Does it make sense that they are only using 12 acres out of 75?
We’ve gotten tiny checks for years on a 300 acre tract that we own 39.2 acres of. It is pooled. The lease was apparently signed years ago. Recently Lone Pine offered Us $49, 000 to sell our interest to him. We did not but thought something was probably up. A friend of ours who is a retired land man called the oil company for us and found two horizontal wells are being drill on our land - our interests are pooled, btw and would be operational in January. The oil co never notified us if this. Do we need a lawyer? Should we order up our red Cadillac? Will our little payments just start going up? What should we expect?
There’s a lot shared here on lease bonuses and %, but very little on pooling modifications. I’d really like to here of your experiences re modification bonus and increasing the old lease %.
Thanks for your help.
Any recent offers to purchase? If so, what is the going rate?
This is my first time on this forum… also my first time being a mineral rights owner. My sisters and I have received lease papers from Antero notifying us of these mineral rights left to us by our great grandfather. We knew nothing of this until 2 days ago. The lease says we have interest in 77.6 acres in the new Milton district. I contacted the assessors office in WV who stated the parcel numbers are not in New Milton, but in McClellan… ?? All this paperwork is mumbo jumbo to me. I am trying to do research to find out more, but no one seems to know much. Im glad I found this forum… They want to lease for 100 dollars bonus @ 12.5 interest… they say the interest is only in .00157 acres? doesn’t make much sense to me. that is only like the size of my rug! Antero lanman said he didn’t need to get out permission they could just do it… but he didn’t want to see anyone get pushed out of their mineral rights that we have had for over 100 years. If anyone can shed some light on this for us, it would be greatly appreciated. they only gave us till Aug 30, 2013 to sign… and we just got the paperwork two days ago (aug 22) What should we do?
HI James, Thanks for the response. First of all, we are located in Michigan… second… there aren’t any living relatives any older than our generation from the Doak side. Grampa Harvey only had one son, my grandfather, who had my mother and her two brothers, who are all deceased. My cousins , I wouldn’t know where to start to contact them, there are only 3 of those from my two uncles. (one cousin is deceased also) I wouldn’t even know what the going rate for anything like this is. Nor do I know or understand do we just own the mineral rights, or is there surface involved… the county clerks office couldn’t find much. The assessor wasn’t that informative either. I do believe I need to talk to someone who knows the ins and outs and can explain what this is, what to do with it, and how to procede. Its all a guessing game to me and my sisters. They are ready to sign at a drop of a hat, but I , being the inquisitive person I am… need to know more. the whos whats wheres and hows… If they sign, does that automatically make me in the same boat as they are? The guy, Ron Richardson from Antero, said he only needed one signature to proceed. So, yes, im lost. looking for answers.
thanks Clint,
of course I don’t believe, I used to be one LOL just kidding but I was in sales of another sort tho a few years back…, that’s why im here… asking questions. trying to figure out what this all means. what is the best way to handle this, and how to find out what is the direction to go … Im glad I stumbled upon this forum in my research… ive learned there are a lot of people out here that are in the same boat as I am. Of course at first when you get these papers, you think… this is bologna, just a scam… my When my sister told our brother about this paperwork we received, he said, " sounds like swampland in Florida to me" lol we don’t believe easily here in Michigan… I need proof… and papers… =)
Lisa,
First, don’t listen to that landman, he needs you & your sisters signature or he wouldn’t have contacted you! Also if he doesn’t need your sisters & your signature, why does he say there’s a time limit till Aug. 30, 2013 to sign? Because there isn’t a time limit for you all to sign! He is only looking out for his own interest. You & your sisters need to do as much research on this as you possibly can, you didn’t say whether you lived close enough to go to the Doddridge County Courthouse & look up the mineral rights that your Great Grandfather left to you all. You can start by you all asking everyone in your family about your Great Grandfather & if anyone know anything about Gas & Oil Co. Royalties that he got etc. BTW, I don’t think I’d contact this Landman I’d let him contact you (wonder if he will before the 30th), if Antero is interested someone else is sure to contact you & your sisters. I hope this helps you out in someway but, I’ll let Mr. Kyle Nuttall give you the best advise, he’s a Mineral Rights Lawyer who is on this site & reads & answers questions people have. He’ll have have answers that you can go to the bank on, my advice just comes from thing I pick up here on the Forum. Best of luck to you & you sisters!!!
Nancy, I sent you a friend request.
LIsa,
Do you believe everything automobile and insurance salespeople tell you?
I didn’t think so. Don’t believe everything some landmen tell you. I’m not saying all landmen are not honest. When they give you an ultimatum or else, that’s a red flag. Good luck on your lease. I have read some of Kyle Nuttall comments and I believe he is a good person to do business with.
Clint Liles
Hi Lisa, James Reed is right about not being in a hurry. Doddridge has a lot of mineral activity, and it is in the desirable part of the Marcellus shale.
He is also right about Kyle Nuttall, a very good and also very busy attorney.
You need to learn as much as you can about this. I think the first thing would be to understand more about the tract and what the tax ticket says. You said you talked with the assessor. It sounds like you have not been the ones paying the taxes. Did the assessor’s office say who that was? I have some experience with the tax records in Ritchie, not Doddridge, but have a subscription to a website with the property tax info for all the WV counties. If you want, I can look up things. You might not want to do this publicly, and if you’d be comfortable doing it, you can friend me and I can tell you what I find. It would be easy if you lived there… I live in North Carolina and at least had my aunt and mother who had been keeping up with it, but still have a lot to learn.
Was your Grampa Harvey a Doak? or a Harvey? There are things to learn on the internet about geneaology; that might be something you and your sister could do.
If there has not been any updating of ownership (heirship) at the assessor’s office since your grandfather or even your greatgrandfather, and the property and thus the taxes are in one of their names, it might be true that one person could speak for all, but I’m not sure about that as a legal matter. I am NOT an attorney!
About the bonus, I think minimum should be $1500 an acre. That is the kind of thing Kyle can help with. He is reasonable.
Nancy
Hi Lisa, I replied! Let’s find out what we can.
Lisa,
We were approached by a different landman from Antero about 6 month ago who also gave us a deadline. I was like you and found this forum had lots of good advice. There is no real deadline, and right now WV needs a signature from every mineral owner before they can drill. Either wait for the landman to come back with more money or tell him you are representing your family and you all want $2400 bonus and 18% royalties (this was advice from Kyle Nuttall). You can come up with a larger figure, but if you at least ask for this amount the landman will know you are not naive and will begin the negotiation process with you. If he is anything like my landman, each time you negotiate over a term he will give you a new deadline which is usually about a week later. (But remember, deadlines don’t mean anything). After you negotiate those two things, then you can ask for other changes to the lease. The lease, as they present it, is not your friend - and if you want any benefits to come of your mineral rights you need to get as much of that lease changed as possible before you sign it.
As for you mineral rights being small, when we got our final lease to sign, the amount of mineral rights that originally the landman told us we had was actually more, so I don’t know if he made a mistake when he first approached us or if it was a tactic he used to keep us from fighting for them because we’d think they were not worth much.
Lisa, you should friend him and ask him for his number. That is probably the fastest way.
Kyle Nuttall 1 304 473 1403 office
Hi: you know I have signed 15 leases with Antero in the past year and I have never had the problems that I see posted here, If I have a question they give me an answer, never was asked about a deadline, always had time to negotiate a price, Bonus money always came within a month. I deal with Antero at Bridgeport WV directly. Note: I do not work for Antero either, I am giving you folks an honest opinion.
Just speculating, but maybe you are easier to find than some of the rest of us? I imagine they send some of these landmen on these daunting missions to track down generations of genealogy and locate relatives who have moved to who knows where, and by the time they find us they are running tight on their own personal deadlines. I wish they didn’t make up these lies, but some of them do. I have often wondered how much pressure they are under, if they get bonuses for rounding up a certain amount of leases in a certain amount of time, or if they have a budget where they can dole out portions of their allotted money as they will, so if they can get away with signing low cost leases, it helps them stay within their budget. I think Antero, itself, seems to be a decent company, but some of these landmen are on a bit of the shady side.