Was notified that my wife and I inherited mineral rights on 16.21 acres by a EQT landman.
Was told there is a triple play and they want to begin horizontal drilling.
They want us to agree to pool our mineral rights into a 640 acre parcel with six wells.
Was told they would like to begin drilling this fall.
We have no idea of our portion of net mineral rights.
This is in the Alma area and we need a title abstract company
Any advice and recommendations would be most helpful.
Thanks.
I can suggest 3 attorneys that I know about in the general area. Dean Rohrig in Middlebourne, Tyler county
Scott or Rodney Windom Harrisville WV [(304) 643-4440] (Ritchie county, directly south of Tyler county)
Kyle Nuttall in Buckhannon WV. He is a member of this forum and you can search for him here. (a few counties over)
One of the above lawyers wanted a $5000.00 retainer before the he would have any discussion with me
No need to say which one. Try the others. I have only actually met two of them (Windoms). If you haven’t seen this yet, try this link to WV documents searches and choose Tyler county. If you need help (their site is not all that helpful) just ask. I think the “Index search” is from about 1990 or so until today. The “Archive” is for older documents and is somewhat tricky to use until you get used to it.
I too have worked with the Windom Law Firm, have been extremely happy and strongly recommend their offices.
I and my family were and still are new to this Industry, but with guidance from the two who reached out to you above, we followed good advice and contacted the Windom Law Firm which was the best decision we could have made. This firm knows what they are doing and champion for the novice. Unless one understands this industry, the complication we ran into with paper trails, terminology,legalities. accountability and underlying responsibility can be overwhelming. Nancy and WV mineral owner are great advocates to all. UNDERDOGS for the novice !!! The novice is great bait for the sharks.The sharks can and will undermine the integrity of your understanding just to get a signature on a contract. Not that it is good or bad, it is what it is…the nature of business. It is up to one to make good sound choice to protect your own interests, which requires research, learning and in our case legal representation. We found this industry has a life of its own. Because of the three above named we can and are at a level of comfort to trust and have faith in their GOOD HUMAN DOINGS !!! Windom Law Firm did good work for us.
I will reach out to the Windhom Law Firm.
By using the link Nancy provided, I discovered that the individual that EQT identified we are heirs actually owned mineral rights to 90 acres instead of the 16 acres that EQT told us about.
It pays to be informed! Glad it helped.
Update.
I hired a title company to search for the chain of title to the property. The owner of the title company said he would do a day’s work of title research for $300.00. He was supposed to call after performing the one day of research.
Received an email today that his cell phone wasn’t working but he was emailing me as to his results. He didn’t provide anything. He said he wasn’t charging me anything.
He told me that he had connections with employees of EQT and would see if they could help him with info after he had performed a day’s research.
He basically tried to persuade me to sign with EQT and opined what a good company they are.
I will stand my ground and not sign until I can find out my net mineral acres and the chain of title.
An individual,(unknown to us) had signed a lease with EQT as having full mineral rights ownership around 45 years ago.
EQT is wanting to drill and they have found a cloud on the mineral rights title as such that they have discovered my family has mineral rights ownership and have contacted us wanting us to ratify the old lease and amend it.
EQT has not provided the chain of title and we will not sign until we have it.
Another example of what a good company EQT is.
After dealing with the title company in that area, it leaves me to believe that some are in cahoots with big energy. i feel that hiring a company that will work for the mineral rights owner is going to be a challenge. Back to the drawing board. i had called a land manager for EQT, and left him a voice message. i received a call from the EQT land manager. This contact info was provided to me by the EQT landman, as this is his boss. I informed him that until I see the chain of title,there will be no deal. He said they have performed five years of research on the mineral rights of this property.
LOL
if that is true, then there should be no problem with divulging our interest. He said he would send me the info.
Time will tell.
One thing is to find if your the only one on that 16 acres . Because if your not what royalty you get will be very little. Also get the the highest per acres lease money. Because if there are other people own shares in that 16 acres things start to shrink. Let a lawyer that knows about oil leases to help you because they will rip you off. When I leased mine my daughter was very ill and I did get into it very much so long story short use a lawyer. Protect number one.
My apologies for that last post. I’m new to the site and saw that you cannot solicit any type of work so I deleted.
Robbie,
Title in WV is notoriously difficult to ascertain. Metes and bounds descriptions makes it a chore to plot the acreage, many folks died intestate and without probates so you have to rely on affidavits from others to build out family trees/proportionate ownership, and even then there are multiple issues you may run into with however the title attorney is going to interpret various terms in 100 year old deeds that are very difficult to read because they are so faded/poorly written. Because of these issues, title opinions are very expensive (typically $10,000 and up, depending on complexity of the tract/title) and companies hold on to them closely as it gives them a competitive advantage. What we do, and maybe something to think about, is to either participate in the drilling of the well with a nominal interest, say 0.000001 net acre, in order to have the rights to the well data as well as the title opinion. You may also negotiate for these same items as a condition to executing a new lease or ratifying an old one.
Also, almost every land service company you find will be a contractor of one of the larger operators in the area, as that’s who the operators rely upon to do the leasing, build the abstracts for the title attorneys to form their opinion off of, etc. They probably won’t want to do or say anything that may upset a past/present or potentially future client.
Thanks and good luck.
In essence, the dog won’t bite the hand that feeds it.
I will plan to visit the Tyler County courthouse and research back as far as I can go.
i think the oil company is unable to drill because they found that the old 1973 lease was made with a person who claimed the mineral rights in entirety.
That would put a cloud on the title.
Do you ever just buy the mineral rights straight out . I have a lease with JayBee . The wells are producing. They are drilled to the Marcellus shell
Plenty of people buy rights.
If you need help finding people to buy your minerals I’ve got a list. Being a lawyer working in oil and gas has put me in touch with a lot of them. The crazy thing is, there are new ones popping up every month. I’m always hearing about new ones.
A note of caution on selling your minerals. There is a vast market of buyers out there buying minerals from private families at low costs and then flipping them for quite a few multiples higher to large royalty companies. If you don’t need to sell, then don’t. If you do, then really do your homework and get legal and accounting help to determine a much fairer price than your first offer. Never, ever turn over a deed without getting a check (preferably a cashier’s check). You don not have to sell all your minerals either. You can split them up and only sell part.