Several members of my family own interests in a Reeves County property. The property can be located on the GIS map, it's H&GN RR abstract A-3488. In April of 2013 four of us were approached by a company called Wilson Systems about drilling a commercial disposal well on the property. After informing them that there were four more owners in addition, we went through a very lengthy and costly process with an oil and gas attorney and multiple 10 way conference calls and finally reached a set of agreements and a compensation package that suited us all. The final contract was in the process of being drawn up when we were informed by Wilson Systems that they "hadn't realized" our property had no highway access and they were in the process of trying to procure a right of way. That was the last we ever heard from them.
This November, my 91 year old aunt received a very large parcel of paperwork which she did not understand and didn't deal with, but we were able to obtain from her over the Christmas holiday. It's a notification from a company called PA Prospect LLC to surface owners and off-set surface owners of the intent to build a commercial oil and gas disposal PIT, and again, it was addressed to only my aunt and they claim she is the only landowner listed at the courthouse. We gave him the list of all the landowners and he sent us all the packet. My niece who had already spoken to him after seeing the original packet was told that nothing they were building was on our property, but upon looking at the maps they sent, there is a triangular chunk of the SE quarter which is the location of the actual pits, and it "appears" to be owned by PA Prospects. Pardon me, but WTF????
I'll need to call him on Monday to ask how they believe they came to own this property, and which of the owners he believes sold it to him if he thought only my aunt owned it and SHE didn't sell it, but in the meantime, other than filing a complain with the RRC, is there any other advice you can give? Does anyone know anything about this company?
Hi Lori - I am not an attorney but am sharing some fact finding skills I have developed.
I looked and the owners of the surface according to Reeves County Appraisal District is 8 owners including you. One of them appears to be an Oil & Gas Corp in Midland, Texas, but it wasn't called PA Prospects, LLC. If you send me a friend request I can send you a link showing you all of the owners. This Corp owns 12.5% undivided interest in the 160 acres. Of course, if someones interest in the property was recently sold then it probably hasn't been recorded yet with the Appraisal District.
Thanks. I'm pretty sure I know what's happened. Now I'm just not sure what we can do about it.
Several years ago one of the family members died and left his portion of the property to his church. It was subsequently purchased by an oil & gas lease broker in Midland, Texas. We only discovered this when we were doing the title work for the SWD well two years ago. At that time he stepped up to do some of the negotiating with Wilson Systems and got us very good contract terms.
Now it appears that his ownership portion of the surface rights has transferred to PA Prospect. Obviously, we have a lot of questions. This gentleman knew very well that there were 7 other owners and yet PA Prospect supposedly does not. With a project already encompassing 675 acres, why would PA Prospect need an additional triangular 12.5 acre piece of property on which to specifically build the disposal pits?
Most importantly, can the other 7 owners prevent these toxic surface sludge pits from being built on this piece of property?
The real question seems to be "what are the rights of one property owner over the other property owners in a 'tenants in common' situation". Sounds like a question for an attorney. There are a few attorneys on the forum including Wade Caldwell and Eric Camp.
I know that we all have the right to sell or transfer our surface or mineral rights if we choose to, which is how an oil & gas man from Midland ended up with a percentage of our family property.
What we're concerned about is that this facility could be a huge liability risk and we aren't clear about whether it will encourage or discourage any further exploration or development on the remainder of the property. I would guess that he's maintained his mineral rights and would still be pooled with us in any profit we ever make, but he's the only one benefitting financially from this maneuver.
To say we aren't thrilled would be under reporting.
