How many of you have clauses in your Oil/Gas lease agreements which stipulate if you are pooled then Lessee must pool all or a minimum percentage of your tract in the unit AND, if they cannot pool the amount you are requesting then that's okay BUT the Lessee must compute your production on royalty based on the minimum percentage stipulated in your lease?
Captain, what we did was limit the size of a pooled oil unit and a pooled gas unit (different acreage for each one) and require that a minimum number of our mineral acres be comprised of the pooled unit. It also depends upon whether it is a vertical or horizontal unit. The size of the pool cannot be increased without our written permission. If you had thousands of acres, you could stipulate no pooling at all. With 300 acres you can attempt to get no pooling for an oil well, but I think it would be more difficult to get the oil company to accept this requirement for a horizontal well. Possible, but unlikely in my opinion. One never knows though.
With our amount of acreage they will have to pool us with other lands unless they choose to go vertical but in our area most wells are horizontal. They're going to do what is most feasible and practical for their operations which is to maximize their bottom line. I can certainly appreciate that since that's what I'm doing in my lease negotiations.
I recommend negotiating the minimum number of your acres that will be included in a pooled unit. Anyone that doesn't most often ends up with a small portion of their acres included in the unit. In an earlier lease, I was able to negotiate getting all of my minerals in one tract included in two wells (less than 100 acres). The first well had a minimum the company could pool and, if a second well was drilled, they had to include the remainder of my minerals. I am currently drawing royalties from these two wells and all of my minerals are in these two pools.
6th Generation Texan said:
I recommend negotiating the minimum number of your acres that will be included in a pooled unit. Anyone that doesn't most often ends up with a small portion of their acres included in the unit. In an earlier lease, I was able to negotiate getting all of my minerals in one tract included in two wells (less than 100 acres). The first well had a minimum the company could pool and, if a second well was drilled, they had to include the remainder of my minerals. I am currently drawing royalties from these two wells and all of my minerals are in these two pools.