Oil company out of Lafayette La leased my property three years ago! Paid a mineral lease and a surface lease ! They prepared the site, ie made levees, scraped land piled dirt up in one corner . Left never came back to restore the land back to original condition. Both mineral lease and surface lease expired well over a year . I’ve contacted them asking them to restore all to no avail ! I’ve made a compliance complaint with office of conservation all to no avail’. What do I do next. I just want my land back the way it was ! Thank you
1 Like
If you contacted the state & they won’t do anything it’s time to lawyer up.
1 Like
So it will cost me time and money to have my land put back to original condition???
Unfortunately that is probably correct. The state should have your back, but if not you have very few choices.
1 Like
Keep in mind, if the company is not solvent, your legal action may prompt them to seek bankruptcy protection, at which your claim may be unsecured, which would push your claim down to the bottom of the debt stack.
Although your claim may be relatively small, If you have a legal claim there are probably other claims they have defaulted on. The combined weight of these claims could push them to seek bankruptcy protection.
I assume the company is not held publicly, but if they are, you can get access to their financial statements and find out if they are insolvent or not as well as being able to identify other members of the debt stack.
If they are private, about the only way you can get get this information will be to sue them. Unfortunately, you would have to be able to finance the legal action yourself, while you determine if you can get any financial relief or not.
If I were you, I would start by getting an information I can about their company and the assets they may own before making a decision as to whether it would make sense to sue.
If the risk/reward ratio is in my favor, I sue. If not, then I suspect you are stuck. I don’t believe you want to throw good money after bad. Just my 2cents, take it for what it is worth…
1 Like
Sometimes an oil company will ignore requests from an individual owner, betting that you will not follow up with legal action. I suggest that you have an attorney contact the oil company about the clean-up in compliance with the terms of your lease and/or surface agreement. If that does not work, then you may be stuck with legal actions. As to financial status, check the deed records in your county and in other counties where the company has operations to see if affidavits, liens, judgments or other similar types of notices have been filed against the company in the last couple years. Hopefully these are available on-line. Is the operator in good standing in Louisiana and in compliance or have orders been issued regarding oil and gas operations? That information is available on-line in some states.
1 Like
Thank You kindly… really appreciate it
Thanks a bunch for responding. I really appreciate any help I can get. It’s sad that us landowners, who btw have had the property in our family for over 100 years, trying to do everything right and by the book, have to go thru this kind of disrespectfulness.
Thank you for responding.
This topic was automatically closed after 90 days. New replies are no longer allowed.