I recently leased 6 net mineral acres in 21-13N-9E to Hacienda and the lease was recorded in the Okfuskee County Courthouse on Jan. 8, 2015 as indicated at the OK County Records site.
I then received a letter from Hacienda dated Jan. 19, 2015 that indicates the following:
We are currently reviewing the status of our leasing efforts in this area. Accordingly, we are hereby withdrawing any proposals or offers, whether written or oral, regarding your mineral interests which may have been made prior to the date hereof. All outstanding verbal or written offers to enter into a lease are hereby revoked.
The lease was already officially recorded, so by my understanding, it is not "outstanding" and therefore cannot simply be revoked by a letter.
Has anyone else had this happen, and do you know what my rights are? I contacted Hacienda by phone (left a message) and sent an email to Jason Lowrey, the name on the "rescinding" letter, to ask for clarification. I will update here if/when I hear something back.
Hi Angela, interesting...I just had a similar situation in Hughes County. The lease was "released" - the leasing company cited that the information regarding title was not "curative". The leasing company told us that they were recording a release of the lease last week. Since this is Hughes County, I can't look the information up on the OK County Records site.
Thanks for the info. I remember reading your post earlier, but I get forgetful about *where* I read stuff at the board, and I admit I was too lazy to search for posts about lease "rescinsions" (made up a word there!).
I need to make sure IF Hacienda is in fact rescinding our lease that it gets "unrecorded" at the courthouse so other landmen know its available.
Another interesting tidbit is I talked to a landman who works out of Okfuskee Co. and he'd heard that Hacienda just in the last few days sent out many new lease offers. There's a mystery in these facts that I want to solve!
I posted too soon--got in touch with Hacienda today and learned the "rescinding" letter was sent in error to us. However, Hacienda apparently has scaled back on leasing, and had to let some landmen go recently. The landman I talked to was already "gone" from the company as of three weeks ago, but remembered talking to me a couple of months back, and was able to let me know the status of our lease. I appreciated his caring enough to return my call, and told him this. He said he's headed to Mississippi to find landman work.