Hello, I’ve been watching the W-1 applications for our area and one was finally filed for our lease on 7/24. The operator has requested a lease-line exception. On 8/19 the RRC receive a protest from one person (“Affected persons include owners of record and the operator or lessees of record of adjacent tracts and tracts nearer to the proposed well than the minimum lease line spacing distance.”) Other W-1’s have been quickly approved but of course ours is the disputed one
QUESTION: Where can I follow this other than in the details of the W-1? As a newbie, our attorney gave us a lot of great info but I’m not sure where I can see if a hearing has been granted, etc. The person listed does not own land near the drilling site (based on appraisal district records) so it must be a nearby mineral interest… but that’s also not showing in the CAD site.
Thanks!
Open all the related documents on RRC website under permits, including the plat, to see exactly what the issue is and how many protests have been filed. Each protest letter, publication list, etc will be on the RRC site. More documents are added as received by RRC. If the proposed horizontal wellbore is too close to adjacent minerals, those owners would not want to be drained. Post the well information, including name and operator and API, for more help in understanding the issue. It can take some time for resolution.
Only 1 protest, although one of the required letters was returned due to invalid address. (Interestingly, the c/o name for the estate is same as another letter and since that person didn’t protest on behalf of one estate I’m hoping they won’t protest the other when they get it.)
Lease name is Encore, API # 343-30127, operator is Rose City Resources.
I’m looking at the plat and I can see where the wellpath is in a very narrow area of the leases. I also see tracts with “ULM” - is that unleased mineral interests?
Any help to understand this would be great! I sure wish Morris County had all mineral interests logged but I suppose no county does that until they need to.
EDIT: Is there a point where we contact the operator for information? I generally like to keep up with things on my own but I’m new to this.
The notice states that the protest deadline is September 26, so there may be more protests. If there are any protests, then the RRC will set a hearing. ULM is unleased minerals. It is my understanding that this means that Rose has zero leases for those tracts. It does not mean than one owner leased and another did not lease. So those tracts are not in the unit and are too close to the horizontal wellbore under RRC rules. Rose could negotiate leases with the mineral owners to get this settled. The mineral owners have been identified through the deed records. The county CAD (tax authority) will tax producing minerals after the well is drilled and ownership deck is provided by the operator.
We had 2 protests, but after those were received they posted notification in the local newspaper that all requests for hearings had to be received by 10/30/24. I checked the status today (11/4) and our W-1 “current queue” shows Engineering.
Am I correct to assume they only move to Engineering if they are finished dealing with mineral interest/land protests? I cannot find any information online about how the approval process queues work.
