if small oil co is bought out by larger one do existing leases get transferred or must new co. resign people up?
Typically, the leases are assigned to the new oil company and therefore no new leases are required. Many leases contain a provision whereby an assignment of the lease requires mineral owner approval, however, so you may wish to review your lease to see if that is the case. Finally, the new oil company will be required to abide by the lease provisions. Hope this helps.
William:
My experience is that the required assignment approval is not a common provision in most leases since oil companies don't like this obstacle in their way if and when they decide to do their thing, what ever it is. What is common, if you didn't sign an off the shelf Producers 88 lease, is a clause that requires the original oil company to notify you of the assignment within a given period of time following the deal closing which will include the new owner and contact information. An added note here is that even with this clause, many if not most companies will ignore letting you know anything unless you do your homework by phone or letter.
Question: Why didn’t you read your lease and ask questions before you signed it? Obviously, the $ sign overrode sound, practical, negotiating in your best behalf. BTW, didn’t Legacy take over Anadarko? Good luck with future considerations. Pat
William:
Everything you said makes a lot of sense in "good times" and everyone has to do what they have to do at the time the situation arises. IMHO, if you were one part of 12, you were working from a huge disadvantage from the get go since making these decisions are hard enough when having to answer to no but yourself. Again, IMO, every time additional people are added to the decision making mix, then the overall complexity of the job increases by an order of magnitude for every person added. Under any circumstance, leasing to these "professionals" is a mammoth of a job and it takes a very skilled individual to be able to read and understand any of these leases. Most of us here on these forums are just mineral owners, some are very skilled and very schooled in lease clauses; but, very few if any of us are skilled enough to complete the lease signing without some expert help.
One additional thing I would like to say is that we all have short term memory; but, if you look at the history of oil over the last 50 or so years, you will see that it has a definite history of good times and bad times and neither seems to last for any long period of time, so when it is good, don't think that it is going to be around for a long duration of time. Lots of different parts of the overall puzzle; but, it happens anyway. I can well remember crude prices less that $10 in 1998 and $140 in 2007, so where ever it is today, just give it awhile and it will change.
Good luck and hope it all works out. We are all in the doldrums right now; but, it will pick back up again.
Your last statement is so true and IMO, we are now seeing the effects of failed government policies from both sides of the isle since the elite Left and the Elite Right are either the same people or at least have many of the same objectives. Make more for the top and screw middle America. Bring in more immigrants with no border controls. The Left wants the votes and the Right wants the cheap labor, now introduce the Fed so they can saturate the World with free money and lower the interest rates to save their buddies rear. The lower interest rates helps the Business Roundtable and the the National Chamber of Commerce (big business) and lowers the cost of Treasury notes and the interest rates on CD's so low that people just trying to get by are starving. All the while all the decent paying jobs have been moved to another country because of high taxes here in the US. Any one with much pride are still trying to find a job and work rather than join the liberal "food stamp" line but because of the influx of legal as well as illegal immigration, the wage scales have dropped to half of what they were (inflation adjusted) even ten years ago.
Now that I have gotten that off my chest, I hope your lease works out to your satisfaction.