We have land in the Unitah basin where Barry Petroleum was who we leased to and production was awesome and we loved the landman and group we worked with. Unfortunately they sold to Linn Energy and since they have we have noticed issues with our monthly checks. I finally got them to release the information on our wells which included things like:
"What we send to the state for production and what we sell for you are not the same"
"We pay based on a marketing contract"
"We do not count the oil unless we have enough for a truck to come pick it up for you"
Now my issue is that they will not send me a list of the amount of oil they have drilled but not sold and still have of ours and the numbers they sent me show they are paying us $8/bbl less than what the lowest shown price for the month was.
Is anyone else seeing these trends? Is this grounds to go to the state or have our contract with them revoked and given to an ethical company?
Oil is sold by the truckload. It simply would not be efficient to send a truck out for less than a full load. Oil is produced into storage tanks and the actual production is reported to the State. Oil is sold whenever a truckload has accumulated. The difference between production and sales in any given month will be reflected in the change in tank inventories from the beginning to the end of the month. In some months sales will be greater than production, some months it will be less. It will almost never be the same. When they report to the State every month the numbers must balance out or the State won't accept it. That data is available at the State website if you want to go to the trouble to look it up, but I seriously doubt you will find any discrepancies, because like I said, the State won't accept their report if it doesn't tie out.
As far as the price is concerned, I'm not sure what you mean by "...$8/bbl less than the lowest shown price for the month" Lowest price shown where? If you are talking about NYMEX oil like what you see quoted on TV every day, that would not take into account for any basis differential and or any gravity adjustments, both of which will factor into the price received at any particular place in the country.
Steve I am talking about the price per barrel sold compared to the price per barrel posted. There is the $8 discrepancy.
As for production numbers they are different as I ran an audit and since Berry sold off to Linn there has been not one month where the numbers are identical. Looking through the forum I am not the only person seeing this trend of state numbers being different than numbers being sent by Linn