I got my O & G lease bonus for my mineral rights in Pleasants County in mid January 2013. Haven't heard a peep since. What flow time should I expect until drilling happens? Months? Years?
Looks like the price of NG is relatively high compared to what it has been, and yet I don't see much recent permitting activity for Western Pleasants County on the WVDEP Oil and Gas Well Info site. Are the O & G companies holding off drilling to try and push the price higher?
Dennis
Most of the activity that I've heard of in Pleasants County is on the eastern side. But it'll come your direction. Who did you sign with?
Kyle Nuttall said:
Most of the activity that I've heard of in Pleasants County is on the eastern side. But it'll come your direction. Who did you sign with?
William Campbell - just wondering whether any activity ever started on your property. I heard of someone else being offered a lease recently, so maybe things are picking up there. Anything going on?
Kyle
No action yet. Keep in mind that I have mineral rights but no surface land. I am assuming that the company I signed with (Chesapeake) is trying to negotiate with one of the adjacent land owners so a drill site can be made available. In the mean time I've been monitoring permits on the WV Oil and Gas web site. The closest recent permits are a mile or two away and by other companies. A pipeline runs just a little ways south of me, so the infrastructure is there. I guess the main problem is that I'm signed with Chesapeake and most of the activity in the area is by Nobel and Antero.
That's what I've been seeing, too. It's hard to keep tabs on what's going on if you don't live on the land. Did you sign a 5 year lease with 5 year extension?
Yes
So you have a while to wait before they have to do anything at all. Keep us updated. Best of luck. I hope they hit a gusher!
Or a "gasser"? :-)
I'm not greedy. I'd just rather have it happen sooner than later. I guess the issue is that if all the adjacent land goes to other companies, mine might never go into production. Do the companies ever do 2nd tier deals, such as sub-leasing rights? Or pay a lesser royalty to the surface owners to get at mineral rights underneath?
They always sub-lease, and do joint operating agreements, and farmout deals, and assignments and sales of all sorts. It's a big part of the business. Necessary, too. It's awfully hard to lease up enough contiguous acreage to fit in one horizontal well, let alone six or eight or more. So they trade amongst themselves.
As far as paying less royalty to surface owners, that's going to depend on the lease that the surface owner signed with the company. And that depends on whether they're a mineral owner as well. No minerals, no lease. No lease, no royalties. Not all surface owners own minerals, so surface owners don't always get to sign a lease. They will get to sign a surface use agreement, if the company needs their surface to develop the minerals. But that won't include royalties.
If the company that leased my mineral rights assigns the rights to another company under some deal or other (as we have been speaking about in previous posts), is it standard procedure that someone informs me about it?
Not usually. The first you'll know about it will usually be when you would get some kind of communication from the developer anyways, such as a royalty check. I try to get some language in my clients' leases that requires them to notify my clients about such changes. Sometimes it's really easy, sometimes they simply won't allow it. It's nice if you can get it.