I have an overriding royalty on three wells in Lea County, New Mexico. Originally these wells were being operated by Paladin Energy who paid like clock work for many years. then they went into bankruptcy and there was a short disruption in the payment stream and then they sold to Pogo. Pogo paid monthly but the postmark was always about ten days after the check date. Nonetheless I was paid monthly.
After not receiving the January check I reached out to Pogo who said they had sold to BXP Operating. I email BXP on 2/17/20 and was told that they had indeed acquired the wells and were in the process of loading the data into their system and were “…diligently working to get them uploaded.”
I have still received nothing from BXP.
I sent them a certified letter to which receipt has not been delivered back to me.
What next steps should I consider given that the monthly checks are about $500.
I had a similar situation, though it involved different operators and wells in a different state. I only learned about the change when payments suddenly stopped. It took about 3 months for payments to resume from the new operator, and another month or two for them to get the back payments fully caught up and begin arriving regularly. Along with acquiring the operation of wells, they of course acquired an untold number of royalty owners, and had to integrate all the records kept by the former operator in its accounting system into their own different accounting system. They needed to make absolutely certain they had every thing correct before issuing checks. (Personally, I wondered if there was a chance that the cost of the acquisition might possibly have also meant a temporary cash flow issue, but regardless they’ve been good ever since).