Hello. We just found out that my father has inherited a very small (0.0189%) interest in a small acreage of land and Vickery would like to give $3125 for a signing bonus and 15% royalty. Unsure if this is worthwhile to pursue and would like thoughts from others as we are newly learning about the process and perceived ownership.
Welcome to the forum. Get caught up to speed by reading the West Virginia forum topics. In WV, you can either lease or they have a form of force pooling which is an alternate and sometimes more favorable in some cases. All tracts must be covered by either a lease or a pooling so that all acreage is accounted for in the drilling spacing unit.
Can anyone suggest some abstractors who work in Tyler County?
Vickery is not my company of choice to work with. They’ll give you decent money, but they won’t give you much in the way of changes to other terms of the lease. If you’re in Tyler County, reach out to Antero, Shenandoah, EQT, and maybe JayBee. At least one of those companies should be willing to work with you.
That said, you’ve got a very small interest in the oil and gas, so you’re not going to get much money out of it. It may not be worth the time to really push hard for a lot of changes to the lease. At very least, though, you should get a No Warranty of Title clause (so you’re not making any promises that you own the oil and gas), a No Recoupments clause (so they can’t take money back if it turns out your share of the oil and gas is less that what they think it is right now), an Indemnification clause (which says they take all liability on themselves if people are injured/killed, there’s property damage, etc.) and a clause that say you don’t know anything about old wells or leases. That will take care of liability as we know it today.
And of course, always ask for more money and royalties.
I’m having a hard time finding good abstractors myself. If you find a good one that wants part-time work, send them my way.
I would stay FAR away from Jaybee and this is from MANY experiences with Jaybee!!! We have dealt with Antero,Southwestern and Tribune and we have had the unfortunate experience of dealing with Jaybee and all of their continuous lying.
Appalachian Mineral Company in Morgantown, WV, could be a great resource for petroleum advisory services. It might be worth reaching out to them to see how they can assist you with your needs.
I’ll give them a shot. Thank you!
They do lie, and they do cheat. In my experience all the producers do. I’m not sure I can say JayBee is any worse or any better than any of the others, but if you think that I suspect you have excellent reasons for it. I will say that their base lease is one of my least favorite. I would request some radical changes to it before signing it. I also know they’ve been through a recent lawsuit for not paying royalties correctly, so I definitely would be careful with JayBee. That’s the way I feel about all the companies, though.
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Kyle. Not sure this is what you are looking for, but she is great at what she does:
Rachel L. Vass, PG, CMA, Rainelle, WV
I’ve talked with Rachel before, years ago. I didn’t realize she was doing title work, but I’ll reach out to her for sure. Thanks for the recommendation!
Not sure what all she does. She is one of our expert witnesses on a lawsuit against Jay Bee in Pleasants. She is estimating production on a trespass case we have.