Back in August, I was overseas. I received several emails about my small interests in Grady Co. 2-3N-5W. I accepted an offer via email and the forms were sent to my POA in Texas. But he never signed the paperwork. When I returned to the States in December, I contacted the landman who I'd been emailing with, intending to sign the paperwork then. He informed me that my interests had been "pooled" by Continental Resources. So I have 2 questions:
1. Why haven't I seen anything from Continental Resources? I've called them several times but can't get a call back)
2. Is there any way to get out of "pooling" with them and strike my original deal with the emailing landman?
Thanks in advance,
Tommy Thompson
Tommy, You should have received a copy of the pooling order and a check for the bonus. I saw it was pooled for $1350-3/16. I assume you preferred one of the other options. If you didn't receive a copy of the pooling order it can be viewed at the OCC website: http://www.occeweb.com/index.html Its a pretty tough site to navigate, let me know if you need any help. When I had a problem with my Continental lease I called Jerrod Lutrell in the land department and he returned my call the same day. Good luck.
Tommy-I am not as up to date on "forced pooling" in Oklahoma as a lot of others here are. But, Oklahoma operates under a force pooling of 640 acre units and may go to 1280s in the future in the Woodford shale. Your landman in all probability has turned your lease to Continental under the terms of the lease you had with him. It should not affect your Royalty Interest at all. Continental will be the ones that drill the well, your landman in effect did a "farm out" to Continental and kept a small piece for himself. Common practice. Believe me you do not want to be considered as part of the "operations" with $10,000,000 wells being drilled. I was there on a $5,000,000 well and beat a hasty retreat to a smaller Overriding Royalty Interest.
You cannot get out of a pooled interest except under things like fraud in the first place. Did your interest get reduced by Continental versus what you had with the landman? That is not usually the case. Continental is way into being really busy with all this all over central Oklahoma. Try emailing, keep calling.
Michael and Don,
Thanks for the replies. I definitely haven't seen a check. My offer was for a flat $1000 - which, because my acreage was tiny, came out to around $7,000/acre, plus a 3/16th royalty.
I'm not having any luck finding the pooling order, but if I can get ahold of them I'm sure I could get it that way. Mr. Lutrell is the gentleman I've been leaving messages for - I was able to reach a woman in the offices and she gave me his number, but no luck so far.
Michael Hutchison said:
Tommy, You should have received a copy of the pooling order and a check for the bonus. I saw it was pooled for $1350-3/16. I assume you preferred one of the other options. If you didn't receive a copy of the pooling order it can be viewed at the OCC website: http://www.occeweb.com/index.html Its a pretty tough site to navigate, let me know if you need any help. When I had a problem with my Continental lease I called Jerrod Lutrell in the land department and he returned my call the same day. Good luck.
Tommy Thompson,
I had a similar thing happen to me just last month when Continental tried to pool me and I sent a letter of protest to the OCC and got an immediate phone call the day of the hearing and they wanted to talk about how to get me to remove my protest. Now my matter was before the OCC board when I had my protest in so think it is just a bit different then yours as you have been pooled already but you might send a letter of protest anyway to the administrative part of OCC. I found them to be very helpful. I first heard of my deceased dad having mineral rights to two different sections there when Continental sent out letters to heirs of my dad and my son received the letter and he called to to let me know. This was back in July of 2008. I called Continental then and they gave me a run around and just quit returning calls and after me putting out money hiring a law firm there in Chickasaw I just dropped the effort thinking it was some kind of scam. But just a few weeks ago my son got another letter telling any and all heirs thru another letter to my son that a pooling case was coming up on Feb. 21st and that is when I did some research and found the OCC and sent my letter. It did get Continental to become more responsive. Also, another leasing company wants to bid against Continental too.
Adrian,
Thanks. I'll try sending a letter to the OCC (do you have an address, by chance?). I got a landman at the Oklahoma Mineral Registry to look up the pooling order and tell me exactly what bonus I should have received, when it was filed, etc. But when I call Continental because I haven't received any sort of bonus, they say they have no idea what I'm talking about. It's so frustrating.
Tommy
Hello Tommy,
I've pasted the web address of the OCC http://www.occeweb.com/og/oghome.htm here and just try to copy it and paste in your web browser and you can find all of the departments there all though it is somewhat of a large website. Sending a letter to them would depend on what department you wanted to use. I sent one to the Commissioners office. There are three commissioners. But I have since found that a good place might be complaints department. At top of the home page is a tab called "complaints" and there is a drop down list of departments and use the "crude oil and natural gas" tab and it will open to a complaint from where you can just enter your complaint and it gives phone numbers if you want to call them in addition to filling out the form.
Continental blew me off back in 2008 when I told them I had found out there were force pooling my dads rights in section 33. After just a few calls to them, the quit answering my calls and letters till the hearing that came up on Feb 21st of this year.
When they were told of my letter of protest regarding them not dealing in good faith before, a guy from Continental called me within minutes of the hearing beginning and wanted to know what it would take to get me to drop my protest.
Now they are in process of setting up a lease for me although they are being slow about it. But here is another land company wanting to bid against Continental for my leases.
Tommy, it's my understanding that at the pooling, the company has to provide evidence as to the highest amount they have paid for a lease in that section, and you get that amount - so it's not bad to be pooled in as you end-up with the highest amount paid to anyone else in the section.