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Permalink Reply by Mike Murphy on July 8, 2015 at 5:46am

copy should be at the courthouse in your county as public record

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Permalink Reply by Mike Murphy on July 8, 2015 at 5:48am

You should have seen one and a copy should have been given to you before you ever signed it .......I have copies of my 2 leases that CHK gave me at signing

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Permalink Reply by Jeffrey Fort on July 8, 2015 at 6:38am

Someone would sign something and not have a whole copy? How did they read it?

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Permalink Reply by kris miller on July 8, 2015 at 7:24am

Thanks I'll try there I didn't sign the initial lease for minerals and impoundment. I inherited the property later in 2010 and every piece of paperwork was there but the contract for minerals. The impoundment contract is just engineering blueprints and permit copies. I don't understand why chk or now swn ignores my requests for a copy of the contract when I have asked many times .

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Permalink Reply by Charles Hurlburt on July 8, 2015 at 9:24am

Kris,

 As leases have become more complex many lessee have been substituting a Memorandum of Lease form" rather than the actual lease itself, when filing at the courthouse.

There are two main reasons; one very obvious and one less so.  The purpose of filing anything is to provide notice to the public that there is a current, valid lease in place.  Custom and tradition dictate that a copy of the actual lease be filed, but the customary and tradition leases were just a few pages long.

It costs something per page to file a document at the Courthouse.  Say it is $1.00 per page.  In the old days leases were three or four, or five pages long; not too big a burden to file.  As tie went on. those 3-5 page lease had addenda that may be another 30-40 pages.  Five dollars per lease may not be too much while $40 or $50 may be more than the company wants to spend.  This is reason number one.

Reason number two is more complex. In addition to adding more pages the addenda also document changes to the base lease, usually concession by the lessee toward the lessor.  A particular lessee (oil & gas co) may very well given more concessions to get their "best" land under lease than they would for less valuable land.  T/here are two groups of people who, if given the knowledge of what terms have been agreed to could hurt the lessee; other unleased landowners and other oil & gas companies.

Other landowners are not the biggest problem.  If they are friends/neighbors with the lessor they can probably find out what terms have been accepted; if not outright, then through a process of inference; and in many cases it won't ultimately matter, if they have the "best" land, they will be able to command the best deal, and if they don't they probably can't

Other oil & gas companies though, are a different story.  One company may have insight about why a place has more or less value than another, and that insight has value in and of itself.  If a rival can figure out that company A values your land higher or lower than mine, even if they don't know why, they can make a play to lease up part of that land.  For the landowner this is a two-edged sword; it's nice to have more competition, but you may end up in a lease with a company that doesn't have a clear idea why your land is good, and therefor may have little or no idea how to exploit the resource most successfully.

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Permalink Reply by Bernard J. Ulincy on July 9, 2015 at 7:55am

Kris:

If you are truly the rightful owner of the property under lease, no company should ever have a problem releasing the actual lease copy to you that many times will not be of record in the county courthouse.  If the company withholds it, it may because they have not verified that you are the rightful owner of the land if your name does not match the name on the lease.  Most companies today file only a memorandum of lease to protect the confidentiality of some of the more personal addenda that are attached but this is your land that will be affected by the well operations, or maybe not if your lease contains provisions that disallow surface occupancy so you need to know what rights you have vs what rights the gas company has. 

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Permalink Reply by Mike Herceg on July 9, 2015 at 8:08am

You should have got a copy at your signing, and you should have had a Gas attorney review for your interest. You may be able to get a copy from your courthouse filed on your property

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Permalink Reply by Lori Wood on July 9, 2015 at 5:11pm

If you are in PA you can use landex.com Type your name and county in and it will come up with every county court document pertaining to deeds/leases that were ever filed in your name. Each record can be paid for and saved to your computer or printed. Not expensive at all. We've used it a few times. Other states have simular websites.

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Permalink Reply by Rich on July 11, 2015 at 4:08am

Kris,
Did you not see the whole lease and read it and have a copy and compare both before you signed it?

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