My family owns the mineral rights for 320 acres in Billings County, North Dakota - Township 138 North, Range 100 West. We were recently offered $500 per acre with 17% for 4 years + 1 option. I live out of state and do not know if that is the going rate. Can anyone help me?
Hi Dan. If you go on the ND website http://www.land.nd.gov/minerals/oilandgasleasing.aspx to see what public land leases in your area went for. My experience is that the public leases will often go for 30-40% more than a private lease would but they would typically do a 1/6 royalty. Whereas sometimes a private lease might fetch a 20% royalty. Good luck!
Be careful who you lease to since Chesapeake and its many shell companies will not pay you. There are now so many it takes some research to see if they are real. Chesapeake entered into a contract to purchase some large tracts in 2010. To date they never completed the sale yet all the property is tied up. Romac Energy & Stoneridge Energy of Longview Texas are also buying for Chesapeake. Romac collected 5 million dollars to tie properties up and then refused to close. So once again it puts Chesapeake time to decide if they want the leases after they drill test wells in the area. The documents show Chesapeake paid 12.8 million dollars and received nothing in return. Yet they want to low ball owners if they can get away with it. And I am not stating anything I can’t prove as I have thousands of emails and documents from CHK. Aubrey McClendon was in the middle of it all.
Dan - please go out to the latest thread under the Billings group and you can see this info. Also - add to the group with your highest offer to date.