What’s mainly important here for the mineral owners who are leased is putting yourself in the mindset of an operator. They are most times highly-leveraged based on what will happen in the commodities market in the near future, even more so when oil and/or gas prices are extremely high like they were in 2014. How do they make money? In a nutshell, they negotiate leases with many mineral owners; pay them a lease bonuses; pay for well design/engineering; pay for drilling, pay for fracking; flow the oil out of the ground; then sell the oil for [hopefully] more than it costs to take it out of the ground; all the while, paying the mineral owner their royalties too. They do this over and over (safety in numbers.) As prices go down, it is harder for these companies to cover costs of production. It is even harder to convince investors that their money is safe and everyone can still see a return. With prices going from so high to so low in such a short period of time, operators are forced to adapt…rapidly. If they cannot adapt, they must get out by selling out, or consider bankruptcy. Now, there are plenty more moving parts here, but that should give you an idea what these operators are up against. Anadarko seems to be a solid operator who doesn’t like to cut corners and puts a lot of value on the DJ Basin. They have adapted their strategy to keep everyone as happy as possible i.e. still paying royalties on existing wells, cutting production costs by being more efficient and renewing older leases. They had a bad 3Q15 but are still profitable for 2015 overall. They will still file, and have filed, permits to drill (permits last 2 years, then are terminated) in Weld County and will still drill wells to either hold leases—a.k.a. stay rooted and committed to the area—but it seems that is where the buck stops. There are still several stages in the production process that have to happen before a mineral owner is paid their share of the profit (in royalties.) I’ve personally seen it becoming more and more popular amongst land owners in the area sell at least a portion of their mineral interest to negate the risk in waiting to see what the future holds. And from the latest news, it doesn’t look very clear.