Oil & gas discussion group for those interested in Ritchie County, WV. Share your experience regarding lease bonus, royalty rates, drilling activity, and oil & gas news.
I am also wondering if there is new drilling or reopening of older wells. My siblings and I were recently contacted by a company called H and G Energy in regards to property owned by our great grandfather and leasing rights to the land. ANY information would be helpful either concerning lease rights and drilling activity. Thank you
I think that activity in Ritchie County is going to start picking up. I've heard that Antero Resources (very active in Doddridge and Harrison counties) is moving that direction, and Ritchie is on the wet/dry gas line for the Marcellus shale formation, so there's no reason for it to not be developed more at some point. However, that's complete speculation on my part. Maybe somebody else has some information on it?
For Darlene:
You can go here: https://apps.dep.wv.gov/oog/permitsearch_new.cfm
and select Ritchie as the County, select a recent range of dates, and see a list of permits issued in that time period, including the operator who is not always the same as the one doing the leasing.
You can go to www.uslandrecords.com and select a recent range of dates. This is free to search but a fee to download and view a document but has deeds, leases, wills, deeds of trust, etc. since 1985.
I did the search, found nothing for H and G but found a few for HG Energy.
As Kyle said, Antero seems to be the busiest company in getting permits and very busy also in leasing but EQT, Noble (partnering with CNX), and a few others are getting permits and leases. The courthouse is very busy with landmen and abstractors searching the records to establish title and to find the royalty owners.
Are you and your siblings the only heirs of your great grandfather or are there other cousins involved?
I learned the hard way to involve an attorney (Kyle is very good) in reviewing a lease.
Please let me know if I can help you, or others here. I inherited some Ritchie county oil and gas royalty interests a few years ago, without a lot of information to go with it, and have been doing long distance research since then. I made one trip to the Courthouse, very interesting experience.
Getting back to the first website, the WV Office of Oil and Gas, there is a place to search operator name
http://www.dep.wv.gov/oil-and-gas/databaseinfo/Pages/searchoperatorandagentaddress.aspx
Hope that helps. There is a lot of great information on this website.
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I've lease with HG. Decent company. Decent lease, but would have been slightly better if we had had a lawyer at the time, although we did have expert advise. They leased from us for a large oil flood plain, but surprised us with two Marcellus wells within two years. 1/2 of our land is on each well. Paying promptly. I like them.
Sorry. This was in Wetzel, but just answering general question about HG.
Jim, that's exactly the kind of feed back that's helpful to people here. Thank you.
Thank you. I presently have an attorney looking over the lease paperwork. I'm not sure how many heirs there are, so I have no idea what kind of potential income is involved .
Hi, I also have property in Ritchie co, and I am interested if anybody has been contacted by a land agent.
Hi Bruce, What district is your property in? We have interests in Clay district for which we have been contacted.
Was contacted by someone from antero resources regarding a pooling clause? Can someone help me out here, they want us to sign and send back.
Our lease is old, and the old interest rate is 12.5, does anyone know on an amendment if we can collect per acreage bonus or what?
Rob, you should be able to get a bonus for agreeing to increase the unit size. Somewhere from hundreds an acre up, depending on where your acres are. It is always a good idea to have anything you sign be reviewed by an attorney familiar with the situation. Sometimes companies try to modify other parts of the lease besides increasing the unit size. Be careful! What district are your interests in? Antero is very active in Clay district now.
And can anyone tell me the average production with new wells in millions of cubic feet per day
Rob, which towns/roads are near your property? Mine is off the Cario/Cisco road, I think Grant district. I don't think my area is seeing much action right now.
THIS IS IN THE CLAY DISTRICT
I think pooling is part of the future, but do your homework. There is not very much precedent for value yet, I haven't seen any numbers/offers. Clay district certainly has some active development, so someone should have more information.
THEY HAVE BEEN SENDING LETTERS FOR MONTHS, OUR RATE IS 12.5 PERCENT WITH NO BONUSES. I AM WONDERING WHAT I CAN ASK FOR SINCE THIS ISNT A NEW LEASE AND ITS JUST A MODIFICATION TO ALLOW THE POOLING CLAUSE. THE LETTER SAYS ITS FOR 75 ACRES WE HAVE BUT IT SAYS WE ONLY HAVE 12.5 ACRES IN THE WELLS PRODUCTION UNIT. DID THE CALCULATION FOR A 1 MILLION CUBIC FEET PER DAY PAYOUT AND ITS ONLY A FEW HUNDRED. IS A PER ACRE OF 400 INSANE TO ASK? OR SOME SORT OF BONUS? NANCY WHAT DO YOU MEAN FOR ALLOWING THEM TO INCREASE THE UNIT SIZE?
Rob, Increasing the unit size is related to pooling. If they need 600 acres to drill a horizontal well, they know where they want that to go, and usually there are several or a lot of royalty tracts in that area they want. Most older leases have a small acreage size that the leased acreage can be pooled with. If your lease says pooling up to 100 acres, they need to increase the unit up to 600, and you need to agree to that, in writing, before they can use your land, and drill their well. Some of the older leases did not mention any kind of pooling, and those need a pooling clause added.
If you saw a map of the area they wanted, and it had part of your acreage in it (you say they said 12.5 acres) you could see what they want. That 12.5 acres, combined with other people's acres, would fit the geological area they want.
When they drill the well, and get ready to pay, your 12.5 acres would be a percentage of the total. If the total is 600 acres, your part would be 12.5 / 600 = 2.08%. Then your royalty % of 12.5% would make this 0.26% of the total sale. This is just an example.
One thing you want to be careful about is that they ONLY want to change to allow pooling or increase a unit size, AND NOT to say something about net production, or have you pay "your share" of any costs of marketing the gas or oil. If your original lease did not have any wording about deductions, then the modification should not, either.
This is when a good attorney comes in. I am not an attorney, I just read a lot and have talked with attorneys.
Hi I have property with mineral rights in Ritchie county and am interested in anything that concerns leasing, so for right now I'll just be reading your info which I find very interesting. Does anybody know a local lawyer that can read a lease contract without conflict of interest with any oil companies?