Lease agreement question

Can anyone help me to understand what this paragraph is staying.

  1. Lessee, at its option, is hereby given the right and power to pool or combine the acreage covered by this lease or any portion thereof as to oil and gas, or either of them, with any other land covered by this lease, and/or with any other land, lease or leases in the immediate vicinity thereof to the extent hereinafter stipulated, when in Lessee’s judgment it is necessary or advisable to do so in order properly to explore, or to develop and operate said leased premises in compliance with the rules or regulations of the Railroad Commission of Texas, or other lawful authority, or when to do so would, in the judgment of Lessee, promote the conservation of oil and gas in and under and that may be produced from said premises. Such pooling shall be into a unit or units not exceeding eighty (80) acres plus an acreage tolerance of ten percent (10%) thereof for oil, and units not exceeding six hundred forty (640) acres each plus an acreage tolerance of ten percent (10%) thereof for gas, provided that, should governmental authority having jurisdiction prescribe or permit the creation of any drilling, spacing or proration units larger than those specified above, such units may be created or enlarged to conform in size to the drilling or spacing units so prescribed or permitted or to the proration units as may be authorized for obtaining the maximum allowable production from one well. Lessee may pool the acreage or interests above described, or any portion thereof, as above provided, as to oil or gas in any one or more zones, and units so formed need not conform in size or area with the unit or units into which the lease is pooled or combined as to any other zone, and oil units need not conform as to area with gas units. The pooling in one or more instances shall not exhaust the rights of the Lessee hereunder to pool this lease or portions thereof into other units. Lessee shall file for record in the appropriate records of the county in which the leased premises are situated an instrument describing and designating the pooled acreage as a pooled unit; and upon such recordation the unit shall be effective as to all parties hereto, their heirs, successors, and assigns, irrespective of whether or not the unit is likewise effective as to all other owners of surface, mineral, royalty, or other rights in land included in such unit. Lessee may at its election exercise its pooling option before or after commencing operations for or completing an oil or gas well on the leased premises, and the pooled unit may include, but it is not required to include, land or leases upon which a well capable of producing oil or gas in paying quantities has theretofore been completed or upon which operations for the drilling of a well for oil or gas have theretofore been commenced. In the event of operations for drilling on or production of oil or gas from any part of a pooled unit which includes all or a portion of the land covered by this lease, regardless of whether such operations for drilling were commenced or such production was secured before or after the execution of this instrument or the instrument designating the pooled unit, such operations shall be considered as operations for drilling on or production of oil or gas from land covered by this lease whether or not the well or wells be located on the premises covered by this lease and in such event operations for drilling shall be deemed to have been commenced on said land within the meaning of paragraph 5 of this lease; and the entire acreage constituting such unit or units, as to oil and gas, or either of them, as herein provided, shall be treated for all purposes, except the payment of royalties on production from the pooled unit, as if the same were included in this lease. For the purpose of computing the royalties to which owners of royalties and payments out of production and each of them shall be entitled on production of oil and gas, or either of them, from the pooled unit, there shall be allocated to the land covered by this lease and included in said unit (or to each separate tract within the unit if this lease covers separate tracts within the unit) a pro rata portion of the oil and gas, or either of them, produced from the pooled unit after deducting that used for operations on the pooled unit. Such allocation shall be on an acreage basis that is to say, there shall be allocated to the acreage covered by this lease and included in the pooled unit (or to each separate tract within the unit if this lease covers separate tracts within the unit) that pro rata portion of the oil and gas, or either of them, produced from the pooled unit which the number of surface acres covered by this lease (or in each such separate tract) and included in the pooled unit bears to the total number of surface acres included in the pooled unit. Royalties hereunder shall be computed on the portion of such production, whether it be oil and gas, or either of them, so allocated to the land covered by this lease and included in the unit just as though such production were from such land. The production from an oil well will be considered as production from the lease or oil pooled unit from which it is producing and not as production from a gas pooled unit; and production from a gas well will be considered as production from the lease or gas pooled unit from which it is producing and not from an oil pooled unit. The formation of any unit hereunder shall not have the effect of changing the ownership of any delay rental or shutin production royalty which may become payable under this lease. If this lease now or hereafter covers separate tracts, no pooling or unitization of royalty interests as between any such separate tracts is intended or shall be implied or result merely from the inclusion of such separate tracts within this lease but Lessee shall nevertheless have the right to pool as provided above with consequent allocation of production as above provided. As used in this paragraph 4, the words “separate tract” mean any tract with royalty ownership differing, now or hereafter, either as to parties or amounts, from that as to any other part of the leased premises.
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With extended modern horizontals, each well involves many leases i.e. lots of different owners. This attempts to limit the drilling company from forming a large pool HOWEVER allowing for governmental pooling order, if you’ve heard the term forced pooling – that is what this is referring to. The company wouldn’t be able to drill without this unless there was a huge lease. From the mineral owner perspective, the larger the well usually the better the results even if the interest becomes diluted. Then it rambles on about each lease getting paid on the proportionate share of the unit.

So this is pretty standard

Yes, to provide a fuller explanation, spacing orders and clipping of interests have real economic repercussions. Through the lens of ‘there are no royalty payments if there isn’t production,’ it behooves the promotion of unitization. A discussion of forced pooling is beyond this scope, but imo I’d rather let the operator pull me into a larger unit as long as they’re being prudent with the reservoir.

Lease provisions vary widely and oil company lawyers write them to give the oil company the widest rights. And the provisions interact so your example needs to be read in context of the rest of the lease. If you are reviewing for a new lease, then you should consult an attorney to review before signing. If this is an older lease, then you should pose a more detailed question to get more responses.

Devon, this is the pooling clause. Pooling is the combining of the oil and gas interests in a “drilling unit”, in this case, 80 acres for oil and 640 acres for gae wells. The concept is conservation of the oil/gas in the reservoir (density control) and the protection of correlative rights of the mineral owners in the drilling unit. Each owner is paid its decimal ownership in the production based on the royalty clause in the lease, but in the proportion that his/her lease acreage in the unit bears to the total amount of acreage in the unit (in the case of a drilling unit).

Pooling clauses are in most, if not all, oil & gas leases. I advise owners to be sure to have a Pugh clause, A Pugh clause is utilized to limit the acreage that is held by one well to only the acreage that is within the production unit covered by that well.

Pooling, while conceptually understandable, has financial implications for the mineral owner, so while not a provision to avoid, it should be fully understood, and the lease should be otherwise modified to protect the owners’ interests in light of the pooling clause. You should consult an attorney knowledgable of oil & gas leases before signing anything you don’t understand.

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Ok thanks for your input. I will definitely have someone look at it

what state are your minerals in?

Texas Shelby county AM English survey A 185

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