My wife and I have signed a lease with Chesapeake Energy in April 2010. The property is in the city of Fort Worth. The lease was signed on a unit that has been producing Gas since Dec. 2009. It is August 2010 and we still have not recevied our division orders. I contacted Chesapeake in July. They claimed that a division order would be sent out in a month. Now in August they tell me that they do an update every couple of months for Division. At one point I was told that I would be paid retro-active to the date of the lease. Now I’m told I will be paid based on the date of the Division Order. Which is correct and is there a required time to have division orders sent out once you sign on a unit that is already producing. thanks for your reply.
Don’t know if this will help but, I did (I think) the same thing you did. I signed a lease when I bought my house and did not know that it had 3 producing wells on it, with 6 more being drilled. All I was told was that it would have upwards of 7 wells sooner or later. I didn’t find out that the 3 wells were producing until about 10 or 11 months after i had singed. Understand that I’m from Mississippi and knew nothing about gas or gas production. I found this site and it changed everything. My house is in a subdivision with 1 to 5 acre lots and the wells are about a 1/2 mile away on someone elses property and you can’t just walk up to them. I started calling Devon (wich operated the wells) and Carrizo ( which drilled the wells) and took a while to get an answer, but I recieved a check before I got an answer. The check covered everything all the way back to when I signed the lease. It also covered 3 months before I sgned. I guess it did that because the house was a forclosure and it was in limbo for a few months. I’m not questioning that one. All in all I got the first check 1 year after I signed and I recieve a check every month now. Hope this helps. Virgil
Dear Mr. Teal,
“Now I’m told I will be paid based on the date of the Division Order.”
You were told wrong. The only items that I can conceive off the top of my head that could potentially affect you that are time sensitive are the date of the lease, date of first production and the date that you ratify an unit if you own a non-participating royalty interest.
If your lease was pooled into the unit, you are entitled to royalty unless the title work has not been completed or there is a title issue (valid) on your lease.
This is another reason to require payment within a certain number of days from date of first production or the lease is subject to cancellation.
They DO NOT DO an update every couple of months. That is just ridiculous. They will do their abstracts and the Division Order Title Opinion will be rendered as of a date certain.
It is my business advice to make a demand for payment under the appropriate state statutes.
I chanced on a request for family tree info by a landmark and emailed him A few months ago. Apparently, the 20 acre mineral right our family has in gardendale texas has a producing well. I finally got the api, lease and operator numbers but nothing else from online searches. The land man told me he hasn’t chained my title yet.
Any ideas as to what I should be doing, or expect to happen next?