Rick H: I did not see any specific terms you were concerned about in the lease you were negotiating. Would use care to share what part of the lease clause you were concerned with And why? i’m very interested in what lease forms and exhibit a is people are using now. I agree they are very important. Especially from my future perspective. Thank you.
Rick, you are so right about the no deduct clauses. For a couple of years CLR abided by the clause. When the oil price crashed it suddenly wasn’t worth the paper it was written on and the attitude was “ok, so sue me”
And spacing is spacing no matter who drilled the well. It’s possible (even probable) that your friend was HBP’d my an older well in a shallower formation, Newfield spaced the Woodford a few years back, pooled the owners that weren’t HBP’d, and then drilled their well. That’s why electing under pooling orders isn’t a bad thing…the operator only gets access to the zones that are pooled.
The wells in the 60’s were spaced on 40 acre spacing. It is possible to drill an unspaced well, but I’m not sure back then how those rules work regarding HBP’ing acreage. It looks like this section also falls within the Purdy Hart Sand Unit which further can convolute the situation. The first 640 spacing was by Newfield in 2013 for the Hunton, Mississippian, and Woodford.
And the short answer is yes they should have been contacted by Newfield about pooling. It sounds like though that the issue might not be Newfield’s fault though if someone contacted them about money that was owed to them. Newfield (or any pooling party) has a responsibility to contact all mineral owners in a section, but that can only go so far as there are always going to be unknown addresses, parties, etc. From my experience, the blame typically lies with the mineral owner about not being contacted. There are plenty of lazy land people though. Would need more to the story to judge whether they have a right to be upset or not.
So M. are you saying that if the old well was a shallow gas well that Newfield going down into the Woodford would only have to give him a 1/8th because that’s all they got for the old well?
What M Barnes is saying (sorry to speak for her) is lots of old gas wells hold entire sections. It is fairly common. Depth, zone, etc doesn’t really matter. It has more to do with spacing orders and lots of really old leases being for 1/8 which is far less common nowadays. That being said, I do not see 640 spacing in 16-3n-4w until Newfield spaced the Hunton, Mississippian, and Woodford in 2014.
I had told the friend that maybe they sent pooling papers to his dad’s address and since there was no reply they gave them a 1/8th but he said if they knew how to reach them about the money they should have know how to reach them to send pooling papers and they did not.
Message me if you don’t mind. I am happy to look your friend up and see what is going on. I’ll need his info so better to keep that private. Cheers.
Huey…yes I will.
If the old well was a gas well, it was mostly spaced at 640 and it would hold the acreage for decades and now holds it for the horizontals. Lots of us mineral owners are being held by those old leases.
Huey, but shouldn’t they have gotten pooling papers before the first horizontal well was drilled a couple of years ago?
The #6 Hollinsworth well had already been drilled but it only included section 9 and not my friend’s section 16. Don’t know why they would drill that # before drilling numbers 2-5 but they did.
One last thing about what we’ve been talking about is my husband said the old well was probably not a gas well because it has a pumping unit (pump jack) on it.
Huey, I believe he said they had been getting a small check off of that old well so he just might not have known what Sec. T and R it was in. I could be wrong on that though.
Huey…I may not know how to message you correctly. I went to you name in the members and left you a comment. Was that the right way or not?
Huey…did you get it?
Huey…the friend is our accountant and a very smart business man. He said since Newfield knew how to contact them about have his dads money (I suppose it’s pooling money) that he felt they could have reached them with pooling papers since they still have the same p.o. box # and the postman here contacts them when they have mail in it.
Done Huey…I might add that the first Newfield well was already drilled and completed before they contacted Ronnie about the money (which like I said I believe to be the pooling money).
Rick…he said they have had the same P.O. Box that his dad had and he’s had the same address for years. His dad had everything in a Trust for them when he died but evidently didn’t have this section listed because they were unaware they owned it until Newfield contacted them to give them and told them they had his dad’s money that I believe to be the pooling money. At that time the #1 Hollinsworth well was completed. They did receive Increased Density papers for these new 8 wells. What I was thinking was if they sent the pooling papers to his dad before the first well they would have gotten them in his mail box. That is if like you said they were not HBP but Huey was saying there was no evidence he could see that the spacing was 640 acres until they drilled the first Hollinsworth well so I don’t know how they could have been HBP.
Got it!