My cousins and I are mineral rights owners for property in Doddridge County. We do not own the surface rights. We have been given a lease to sign that has many references to surface rights. for example water usage, crop damage, free gas and storage rights etc. I feel all these reference should be removed from the contract. Does the gas company have to make any agreements with the surface owner? Does anyone have any idea about this subject?
From what I have been told, you can delete the parts about surface usage since you are not surface owner and the company should not mind that. I think they make the lease forms for general use, and a lot of the people they try to lease own surface rights. However I am not a lawyer so don't take my word for it. You can ask the landman. That should be an easy question for him/her to answer. Also, on storage rights, you don't want that anyway since they can put a storage well on your property (the property where you own the minerals) and that holds the lease on and on maybe forever, without their having to drill a well. I guess if you owned the surface, and you knew there really was no oil or gas under your property, you could make some money with storage, but otherwise I have read often to delete that part.
Also does anyone know about storage of gas being used to keep the lease in force? Is this just a tactic to keep from drilling if the price of gas is not in their favor?
I think they need some place to store the gas and are glad if you give permission (for a fee). But it does hold the lease. It could be for the reason you said: low gas price. But I have read that they are not usually as focused on daily or monthly prices for gas.
Regina:
Generally, all surface matters involved with a well is between the operator and the surface owner. I would question these references to surface rights and explain that you only hold mineral rights on the property. You might request that a new lease be written omitting this from the lease content.
Regina, what else is in the lease that does not benefit you? There are changes in "their" lease that you should have added, deleted or modified for mineral owners. There is a lot of info on this site to help you out before you sign any lease.