Division of Order HELP?

Dustin you would be paid 16% from the first barrel until the well was paid off and the penalty retired as non-consent. Frankly, when I advised that you could go non-consent last year, you had not told yet how small your interest was. Your small interest will not pay a significant amount of money even if you participated. If you had even a few acres I would take 16% for a period of time and 100% thereafter rather than 18% for all time. My brother and I are non-consent in a spacing where we have 1.935 acres with 4 wells and we are fine with that. Consider that if the operator intends to recover up to $50,000 per acre per well in the spacing over a period of time of 30 years, 8 million dollar well which with penalty is costing you 12 million. 12 million divided by 1280 =$9,375 per acre.

Dustin, I must apologize to you. In an earlier post I gave you the wrong production figures for your Idaho well which in fact has a production of 63,509 barrels through November (3 months plus a partial month) and a production of 18,392 barrels in November. The Clearwater well has a production exceeding 156k barrels. To the best of my knowledge I have never made such an error before, please accept my apology. Both wells are still great wells, I just wish for your sake you had more acres under them.

Dustin, I have no doubt that these wells will pay out and pay out quickly, there just may not be enough of it to make it worth your while to be non-consent or even participate for that matter. I would ask for more than the $800/ net acre and 18%, I would consider that offer an insult.

If at all possible I would pay the participation which should be fairly low so the operator would make little to nothing off my interest and then seek to sell my interests in these wells because if this is all you have, it will probably not be worth it to you to administer. Who might want to buy your small interest? There are probably some minority interest holders on your AFE THAT WOULD LOVE TO PICK UP ANY MORE INTEREST UNDER THESE WELLS, they already have the paperwork to do for their interest anyway, and it's all money!

In my opinion it would not hurt EOG to offer you $4,000 per net acre ($640 total) and 22% royalty on your .16 acre. As non-consent, you aren't going to notice a big difference between 16% and 18%. If it were mine, EOG could do better, or I would participate and sell it, not that EOG would ever miss the net revenue of .16 acres even with great wells on it but just on principle, because I think they are offering you much less than they would offer anyone else in that spacing that even had 2 acres. I figure if you reward companies, or people for that matter, for being POOPHEADS, then poopheads they will be. Realistically speaking, I think you should have been offered more, been safely leased so you don't even have to think about it anymore, but someone decided to squeeze you because they could and you came here looking for information. Good luck Dustin.
Dustin Larson said:

So would I be better off signing a lease? Or just not worrying about it at all?

Thank you for the in-depth answer concerning this. I should point out that the total acreage on mineral lease is .625 I do believe not sure if this changes things or not? I do know I am in this with my stepfather and brother. My stepfather wants nothing to do with this and has signed all interests over to my brother and myself.

I do not even know who to contact regarding asking for more money on these wells? I did ask the leasing company for more money as well, to no avail.

As of today's date, have not even received a division of order or anything except the AFE. There are no other "minority interest holders" listed on the AFE.

Starting to feel like this whole "mineral interests" has been a headache since I was notified by the leasing company a couple years back about this.

Have even gotten a lawyer to do the probate for this, so will likely be out about $4-5000.00 for that. I will do a search and see if (hopefully) my grandparents had some other mineral interests in ND or possibly other places in the US.

Not sure what next logical step would be, do not have thousands to just throw around.

Dustin, it does make the numbers a little better, but still a question of whether $40,000 before taxes over a period of 30 years is worthwhile to embark on learning a new career? .625 acres working interest could very well be interesting to someone who already had a working interest in the spacing. EOG may not have included the other interests in the spacing, your AFE may not even have been signed off on by EOG, I received one that way once and they had to send me another at my request because I could hand you a piece of paper saying you owe me a billion dollars, but I don't think anyone would expect you to pay it if nobody had signed off on it, that it was correct. Look for the leasehold interest for EOG and if it isn't 100%, there are other interests, other leaseholding companies that have participated in EOG's well/s. If you decide to go the non-consent or participation route, let me know and I will look online for a memorandum of Joint Operating Agreement to find out who has chipped off part of EOG's leasehold block. Not everyone will have assigned their leases to EOG for the usual 23% and some cash, not in an area as good as yours.

When negotiating for the money, if they feel they have the upper hand and you will cave, they have no reason to increase their subpar offer. It's not going to cost them much to give you a top of the line offer, they are just trying to squeeze the last penny out of the deal.

I would tell them I would like to lease but I could not even consider their offer, that I would either participate or be non-consent. From that moment on you have capped the maximum amount of money they could make off your interest, just as they were trying to do to you with the poor lease offer. Believe me, I know they will not go out of business for the lack of your .625 acre, but they are trying to make as much money as humanly possible off your interest or why the poor offer and refusal to move any at all on it? Either way, leased or non-consent you are going to be in the hole from the probate expenses for some time. I think you would break even about 6 months sooner if you leased, what a great incentive, to give them 82% of your oil. I think between your two wells and any future wells that you could end up with $50,000 or more over the life of the wells, possibly more, if you go non-consent over leasing. It would also appeal to me that they tried to drive a hard bargain with me and the result was more money in my pocket and less in theirs. When you convince them you are serious, they may well increase their offer because you have now given them a good reason to do so, they will not make as much money if they can't lease you. It's all about the bottom line. If you think you are likely to turn up more property you are heir to, you might want to start learning the way to maximize all of it right now.

If you go non-consent, there is nothing to do until you reach payout with penalty, you can keep a watch on your interest or not for the next few years, because there is literally nothing to do just as if you were leased. In your place I would go non-consent if I couldn't afford to participate, not just because it would be more money over time, but because in your place I would feel I was not fairly dealt with and that is an activity I never think wise to encourage. That is what I would do and why and it may be colored by the fact that I have already done so elsewhere.

If I may ask one favor; If you decide not to lease, will you report if they up their offer? Good luck, Dustin.

OK, I'm slow & from OK. Is that redundant? I assumed they have pooling in ND & your interest (whoever owned it at the time of filing) didn't respond to the pooling order. The default option at this point is USUALLY either participation with your minerals or non-consent with a lower than normal penalty.

IF it's a 2 mile Bakken well, they are profitable and that small of an interest would allow you to participate in the well and receive ALL the information on it as time passes. This information and the experience with the process will prove invaluable when it comes up again.

Thanks guys! Have taken all this information into consideration. Will look at the AFE’s and figure out how to proceed. Basically thought I would do my probate and get the money that is owed to me. Glad this forum is available to research and ask questions. Will keep you posted. Still not sure how to negotiate but since there IS oil being sold I should have the upper hand to get a little something extra!

Also, they only gave me 30 days to sign AFE. Did they want that money (my costs) up front? Or would they take out of whatever royalties I would receive?

Upfront, I'm sure

Dustin, they will want the money up front. There are some people here who have been waiting for payment of royalty from EOG for over a year. EOG does not have to pay interest if there is a title issue and I know you are in a probate right now. Whether interest would accrue from the time you give legal notice to EOG that the probate is finished, I don't know, but I would give them legal notice as soon as the probate was finished.

Today I got word from EOG they are working the Clearwater well, and I should expect payment next month on the 12th. Since it is still on probate I won’t get for another month or when probate is finished. However she did tell me I can check back next month to find out how much I will get. I know it will not be much, but.

hi i have signed a memorandum oil and lease back in july 2011 with EOG resources... WOOTTON UNIT lease #17051 ... API #42-177-32956 in gonzales ,texas... the well has been producing since July 2013 ... already produced 85,050 bbl ... and i have not heard anything from them as far as a divison order i have called several times and also emailed and still no response ... what is the next step ? plz someone tell me what i need to do thanks..

hi i have signed a memorandum oil and lease back in july 2011 with EOG resources... WOOTTON UNIT lease #17051 ... API #42-177-32956 in gonzales ,texas... the well has been producing since July 2013 ... already produced 85,050 bbl ... and i have not heard anything from them as far as a divison order i have called several times and also emailed and still no response ... what is the next step ? plz someone tell me what i need to do thanks..

Holly,

If you can find out who is purchasing the production from your well, you can fnd out how much revenue they are holding in suspense for your interest.



Nick said:

Holly,

If you can find out who is purchasing the production from your well, you can fnd out how much revenue they are holding in suspense for your interest.

hi nick how would i go about finding out that kind of info

can someone tell me if they could or would email the divison orders eog resources

Holly, email Stephanie_Daugherty@EOGresources.com and tell her this information. She should be able to guide you in the right direction!