Tyler County, WV - Oil & Gas Discussion archives

Nancy, will do. I just have a standard lease & not a lot of money for me. Kyle told me to negotiate because 12.5% & $250.00 bonus is too low. Deb Tanner from Antero has still not returned my call. Will let you all know how things turn out. Maybe they will give me more money to get rid of me.

Joyce, you may here from Miss Tanner and maybe not. Let me get one comment out on this site. These oil/gas companies do not like mineral owners who are informed or have questions. They like owners who do not know anything and are easy to get leased and delivered. Most of the time when you question them, they either ignore your requests or ignore you all together. That is why negotiating a good lease is much more difficult than just signing what is laid in front of you. The companies try to push the lack of negotiating on the mineral owner when in fact, the company is the one who is holding up the process with their tactics. The company has to give at least 12.5% by law so they are not negotiating any. The 250.00 is an insult and those are the amounts that were paid years ago. If they want you to sign a lease they will get back with you. You should get what you want in monies and language on paper and give it to them when they contact you. Then… you may here back soon or maybe later. They are fickle and contact depends on how much they want and need your minerals. A standard lease means nothing. All of the leases the company uses are basically the same and benefit the company. Those leases are meant to be changed by you when you are in the leasing process. What you get changed in a lease will be what you live with.

Ha Ha Joyce, maybe they will! Sometimes they do. There are a lot of people who just sign what comes, so they can afford to give a little to some of the others. Hope it goes well.

DT, I did not know there were no line out on leases. I checked some other Antero leases for other properties to see what royalties they were paying, but there was a line thru 12.5% & no other info re: royalties & I have not been able to find any info re: bonus amounts. I guess they keep that info pretty confidential. They wouldn’t want us to know too much. Thanks for the good advice.

DT, you & Nancy should write a book, you both have so much knowledge on this subject. I’m so glad I took the time to do some investigating & found this forum.

Never leave the company a chance to interpret a sentence or a clause in a lease. Lining out without an explanation is good way for them to go around the clause or wording. The company lease is full of “ifs” and one word can change the whole meaning of a paragraph. Lining out does not tell what you want done or how you want a sentence to read. The company will line out something but, you need to tell in the Addendum on a separate page what each change is in detail. They do no like owners who want changes.

Thanks DT for the info. Maybe I will make the changes on the lease that are acceptable to me & send it registered mail to Deb Tanner at her Bridgeport office. Any thoughts on this approach?

No line outs on lease. I posted last week on one of the county sites about this. Anyone know which one? Lol Best to get several things added and changed. Indemnification clause, no warrant of title, no use of free gas on your shares, Pugh Clause, Penalty for not paying in a certain time after well is drilled and goes online. No repayment of bonus if company finds out they did not get research right. Antero has offered gross at the well and enhancement clause. Neither are great but, gross may be better than enhancement. Someone add some more amendments to this if you would?

Joyce who is Deb Tanner?

Joyce, best to type up a separate paper with changes and reference them where they are found in the lease and send it to them along with a lease. Keep copies because they sometimes lose your stuff. (Imagine that). Do not sign any lease papers until they put all your requests down in writing that are agreed to and send them back to you. Even when they send them back there may still be things that are not to your liking. Then the next step would be more negotiating. Negotiating a good lease does not happen overnight. If you have the feeling that this is not worth it, then you just became the companies best friend…until you sign and then you become a number. Lol

Joyce, they will probably file a memorandum of oil and gas lease instead of the oil and gas lease, if you have any changes. If you see a lease in the Tyler document database saying Oil and Gas lease, it is probably one that had no changes. If you see Memorandum of Oil and Gas Lease, it is one with changes that they don’t want to make public.

I don’t know that bonus amounts will show up in a lease, even one not recorded in full. That usually comes in an extra letter. You would have to find that out by people sharing here, or if your attorney has negotiated other leases, he knows what those bonuses were.

If you get the changes you want, they might re-type the lease to get the terms you agree on, or leave the original lease, and have an Addendum with the statement that the addendum rules. (not those words). This is where you can say stuff like Where the royalty % is listed as 12.5%, it shall be 15%, or whatever.

I think Nancy and I have wrote a book on here. Lol. Lining out something does not tell anyone what change you want made. For instance the no warranty of title. If you line it out then, do not put in writing your intentions, no one would know that. The company my line out the changes but it is good to have what they were lined for and why.

This just seems so complicated, even to negotiate. I would be afraid to put in writing the changes I want in the lease for fear I will end up doing it wrong. Maybe I will try to negotiate the bonus & royalties only & just wait for them to contact me.

Drilling rig working on the Noble Energy SHR 40 pad site is gone. Not sure if the pad site was drilled as proposed our shut down. Noble Energy 2nd quarter reports a loss of 109 million for the qtr. The report also states zero rigs drilling in the Marcellus Basin by the 3rd qtr. 2015.

Kyle, drilling has started on the EQT Vivian Well pad site. They are drilling surface casing at this time.

Hi Yogie, probably there will be some back payment for royalties. However I think legally it is the duty of the heir of a mineral rights owner to notify the company, as well as Tyler County, of a change in ownership.

About the transfer from JB to another company, perhaps you can find that in the Tyler county records.

Go here and select Document inquiry. Best to use Internet Explorer. Then you can search for JB. If you want old documents, when you see Right Click on a button at the top right side of the screen, right click on it and it should download to your desktop the software to search the old documents database.

See if you can find some of your answers there.

Dave, they work to find people to lease but not as hard to find people to pay.

JB should have been holding the revenue to “missing” owners in escrow. However sometimes when one person has been handling things, paying taxes, etc, the company will pay that one person who might not pay the rest of the family. This can go on for years. DT is right, I think, about getting back royalty from JB.

Yep Nancy, When I talked the Antero guy last week about heir ownership passing hands he said something I thought would happen. He said if the company sends out royalty checks and it comes back, they don’t go looking for the current heir. Such was the case of a deceased brother in law. Antero kept getting his modification “stuff” back and they had no idea he had a son from a previous marriage years ago. They were happy when I gave them a name and within 24 hours they found out where the son was. As far as back royalty, Yogi needs to check to see if they put it in escrow or just kept it, when he finds out who was supposed to be paying. I’d say JB would be the one to get your royalty from. Ask them who they paid and ask them to show you the canceled checks of the payee. I can see an attorney in your future I’d say.

Magnum Hunter filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy December 15, 2015 in Wilmington, Delaware.

Magnum Hunter Resources Corporation (OTC PINK: MHRC) and certain of its wholly-owned subsidiaries (collectively, the “Company” or “Magnum Hunter”) announced today that the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware (the “Court”) has approved a variety of “first day” motions related to Magnum Hunter’s voluntary chapter 11 restructuring. Collectively, the first day orders entered provide the Company with the ability to continue operating in the ordinary course while it continues to pursue a comprehensive financial restructuring.

“The Court’s approval is another positive step forward in our efforts to address our capital constraints and reposition Magnum Hunter as a market leader in the new oil and gas operating environment due to record low commodity prices,” said Gary C. Evans, Magnum Hunter’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. The Court approved motions that give the Company the ability to, among other things, pay employee wages and benefits without interruption throughout the restructuring process, continue its current cash management program, continue making royalty payments to mineral owners, and pay pre-bankruptcy claims to certain of the Company’s oil and gas vendors.

Makes good business sense. I’d say there will be others who won’t drill until the prices go back up. They socked a bunch of money into the area and they expect to extract a lot of money in return. That gas is not going anywhere, so they will set on it. They have a few years in most cases to do that on a 5 year lease.