Red River Clean Energy wants my family to sign waiver for Borden County Section allowing them to place solar farm on surface. To me this restricts drilling possibilities although their land man meekly says oh ‘not with all the horizontal wells today’. . Why on earth would we even consider this?
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There’s a lot you can do. If you own both the surface and the minerals of any size you can stop this. Most of the solar farm attempts are partly “Scams”! Some might be govt. backed. It partially depends upon how many surface acres and what Percent of the mineral rights you have.
I don’t think they will forward unless they have much of the mineral estate allowing it. We were paid and approved plan where roads and drill sites were left so we could fully develop the mineral estate. Funny thing was that one of the sites was over a stock pond. Just an error for their benefit. That was fixed.
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Borden County is actively being explored as to the Wolfcamp and Lower Spraberry formations. Relinquishing your rights of ingress/egress (Surface Rights Waiver) eliminates the value or utilization of your subsurface mineral rights. (it removes the rights to establish a Pad Site or Well Location). It is true that a horizontal wellbore could be run from an off site well location, but I would hesitate to surrender what the state of Texas protects as the Dominant Estate (mineral estate). Under these negotiations, the proper course of action would be an Accommodation Agreement, whereby a Surface Owner sets aside a designated Well Location on his property, specifically for the potential well and to protect your mineral interest, in exchange for or in tandem with the Surface Waiver from the mineral owners
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If you don’t own any surface, it’s not in your best interest to do so unless they leave pad sites for future vertical/ horizontal development.
Thanks for all the advice. It mostly corresponds with our thinking to forego further inquiry. Hope it goes nowhere. Will check with our lessees and operators who have bigger stake.
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