Hypothetical situation

Suppose a person has been receiving royalty checks from wells drilled by company A. Company A sells all their leases in this given area to company B. When this person begins receiving royalty checks from company B, the checks are consistently almost 50% higher than the checks from company A had been. Would this person have any feasible legal recourse against company A?

Possibly...or not....

A logical explanation is that company A has certain contracts that they have signed with the pipeline carriers that are very different than the contracts that company B has. That could be good or bad. If company A was selling to their own subsidiary at submarket prices and the subsidiary was selling at market prices, then join the hoards of us who are in lawsuits over that. If it is just a difference in contract prices with third party non-associated subsidiaries, then it is just market luck.

One thing you might want to do is look at your check stubs from the two companies and compare the prices paid on the gross and then look at whether the companies were taking out post production charges for marketing, transportation, etc.

Also, look at the time frame. If you were being paid early in the year at $26 oil and $1.80 gas and now oil is at $50 and gas at over $3.30, then it might be just market timing and price changes.

Could be lots of factors. Other folks might have some ideas. Especially if there is something systemic going on in Beckham with Company A....

Thanks for the tips. I'm not sure that we're not already party to a(nother) class action suit against company A. Their statements are a bit murkier and harder to decipher than those of company B.

I can probably guess who they are. Quite a bit of that lawsuit thing going around. Especially on post production charges.