Which takes you to a website. Under Select a Registry choose Ritchie (the only choice). You can see leasing. Choose recent dates. Search Antero and EQT who seem to be the most active but there are others.
I use Kyle Nuttall who is an attorney a few counties over, in Buckhannon. He is a member of this forum. He worked as a landman in another state so knows how they do things.
Trying to locate information on Oral L. & Frances S. Ball and Joanne M Watson, I believe they are owners of land adjacent to our property in Richie county. They signed with Falcon Partners in 2005.
Mr. Bowley, if you go to the link I put below, uslandrecords, and search you will find that Oral Ball pass away and left his estate to Frances Ball. According to a subscription service I have, as of 2012 she still owned the property she leased to Falcon, on Big Island Run, and lives in Parkersburg.
According to those same websites, Joanne Watson also passed away and her heirs sold to Joyce and Lester Hardbarger who as of 2012 lived in Baltimore. Their tract, which Mrs. Watson had owned, was on Straight Fork of Bear Run.
If you call the Ritchie County assessor's office they can tell you if these individuals still own the properties in 2014 and can give you a mailing address over the phone. At least that is how it was done a few years ago when I need information.
I think there has hardly ever been any activity in the Big island Run area; we inherited a tract there which has not been leased since around 1890, long expired. A few years ago there was interest in the Bear Run in the Murphy district. There is another Bear Run in Union District, I think. Bear Run (Murphy) had some oil. This was before the Marcellus Shale was talked about.
If you have a copy of the lease, you can check terms. It might be expired by now. Falcon Partners only recorded those two leases in Ritchie. No assignments. Perhaps they went out of business since then.
I hope that helps. I have been trying to figure all this out since I inherited some royalty interests in Ritchie county a few years ago. There is a lot to it, to understand what information is available. Thank goodness for the internet.
Thanks so much for the info. So you do know, the tract I am looking at is titled in the name Ruth A. Deavers, and was O & G leased in 2006 to Falcon one of 3 they leased. The lease expired without them doing anything. I found that Ball and Watson were the only 2 other leases they had. Ruth tells me the Falcon lease was 5 years and expired in 2012.
Let's hope something good happens in that area before too long. I think, from what I read, that the companies are concentrating on the wet gas areas, and most of that in Ritchie is in Clay district, the northeast part of the county. I have seen different maps put out by geologists and by O&G companies, with the wet gas portion of the Marcellus further south, covering much of Murphy district, and the Utica under that, mostly or entirely dry gas in Ritchie.
If you want to sign up to get email notification when a new permit is approved, you can go here
and follow instructions. Big Island Run is almost in Wirt County. I am on that list as well. Hardly ever anything but you never know. It was a real hot spot in the early days, 1800s.
I just saw a notice about a horizontal well drilling permit being applied for in Grant district, in fact 4 locations so close that they are likely to be from one pad. This is from the Pennsboro News, for Triad Hunter. Just west of Rutherford, in the Gillespie Run area. I hope that means that the companies are happy with what they are seeing in the northeast of the county and think that there is something good in other parts of the county.
My family has owned surface & M-O on 850a Union distsince the '70s. We have 12 shallow wells, leases on 20+ shallow wells and 6+ deep wells. We have seen every type of gas con going. We,ve sued 2 operators and working on a third. We currently do business with Key Oil and Antero with no complaints yet. Avoid the local independants, they just resellers. I'm not commenting on the local lawyers.
I was in Ritchie County last week. Did some research in the courthouse and found out that Antero is leasing a lot of tracts on Buzzard Run and some on Beeson, both in Clay district. They have been getting and drilling on Lynn Camp in that area before. Filling in some spaces.
Site explosion in Monroe Co. Ohio. Burned up a lot of stuff and there was a fish kill in a stream that leads to the Ohio river. The environment may be in trouble if these types of things continue. This happened this summer if my sources are right.
That looks very scary. We need to make sure our local and especially state elected officials pay close attention to safety and environmental considerations.
Legislative sessions will be coming up in a couple months. Don't forget to contact senators and delegates. The oil companies will pushing forced pooling again. Keep track on wvroa.com
Master Mineral Holdings has been contacting mineral right owners in Ritchie County with buy out offers who have previously contracted with Anterro for drilling and development. Offering a per acre settlement for sale of mineral rights with Anterro's development contract in place. Any comments about this company and what might be considered fair consideration per acre?
They are just wanting a piece of the action. Antero even bought or conned one of the outside owners into deeding Antero some our families minerals. Putting a figure on an acre would not be easy because if Antero drills in the unit and does well, that cash offer would be little in the long run. Once you sell it, it's gone. Some have said an acre in a regular type well is about $8,000 and an acre within a Marcellus well would be worth 10 times that much when they get all the goodies out over the years. I can not count how many of these companies have written or called to buy ours. Too bad they have to try to buy their way in. There is reason they want in Ritchie... It's next after Doddridge Co. Just my thoughts. I can not believe there is not more discussion on Ritchie Co. People must be shy. Merry Christmas!!
Master Mineral Holdings has again contacted us wanting to buy our mineral rights at 4,000 per acre. We have rights in Clay district in Ritchie County. We do not intend to sell them but I am thinking maybe they are worth something since they keep bugging us.
It is safe to say that something is usually worth more than you are offered for it!
Depending on where in Clay, you might get more than that just for leasing.
Do you know if there are any wells, either old or newer, on the property?
I can't get this map to work now (maybe they are uploading currently or something) but when it works, you can see what permits are located where in Ritchie WV Office of Oil and Gas map link
When it works correctly, you can select Ritchie as the county and select some recent dates (maybe last year) and it should show where the new permits are. You can enlarge the map, try to find your area, and see what is nearby.
If someone actually sold, not just leased some of your family minerals to Antero, this would enable Antero to partition you for your minerals. Not a good place to be unless you had the money to outbid Antero....
We currently are leasing to Antero in Clay District and also have signed a lease modification that allows for horizontal drilling on a vertical well on another piece of land there. We did all of this a couple of years ago and to date have not received a royalty check.
I believe the numbers are 085-10194 and 085-10193? I am ignorant to this so I hope that makes sense. We also signed a lease modification on "Monta McConnel" well located in Doddridge County and leased our mineral rights in Tyler County in Meade District.