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Permalink Reply by Mike Murphy on March 28, 2016 at 6:27am

You need to find out who owns your lease.. ... southwestern energy purchased 400,000 acres from chesepeak n west virginia ad PA last year  just call chespeak and they wll tell you who owns our lease

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Permalink Reply by ray schmidt on March 28, 2016 at 10:25am

mine is due 4/16/16 renewed last month.harrison co. ohio,3 year renewal

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Permalink Reply by earl miller on March 28, 2016 at 2:49pm

in Harrison to they have till 3-31-2016 they might forgot about me  

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Permalink Reply by 0ym9x5ag7ury2 on March 28, 2016 at 9:30pm

If you were paid less than $2,000 an acre, Chesapeake will send you a check on the last day of your lease. This is based on being at a family's house last fall when the check arrived on the day the lease expired.

Oil & Gas magazines say the same thing, that renewal will more than likely take place if you leased for under $2,000. I don't know what O&G companies get for flipping a lease, but I do know county governments were paid as much as $8,000 an acre for leasing, and they were under paid.

The Appalachian Basin is the 2nd largest oil reserve on the face of the planet, according to geologists at meetings back in 2010. The Rome Trough has the largest number of Stacked Plays at 16 compared to Ohio's 3. Ohio was on the beach of the ancient ocean that formed the Rome Trough.

Think before you sign any document. You may be waiving goodbye to your potential fortune when you sign that harmless looking document for that nice person.

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Permalink Reply by G.H. on March 29, 2016 at 1:19am

Underpaid at $8000 an acre? That is rather subjective, I'd say.  They probably got $8000 an acre as well as 15%+ royalties, if I had to guess.  Not bad.

Look what has happened to oil and gas prices.  The state may have been paid $8000 an acre for some leases at higher commodity prices when oil and gas wasn't expected to drop nearly as much as it has.  I have also heard of some private landowners having been paid bonuses of $6000-$7000 an acre, which is definitely a pretty penny, in my opinion.  Furthermore, it probably would have been very difficult for these companies to develop ALL of their acreage within the primary terms, even assuming commodity prices stayed high, meaning they may have been operating under the assumption they'd HAVE to pay for a renewal for some of their acreage (essentially $12,000-16,0000 an acre) to keep the lease past the primary term.  $12,000-$16,000 an acre with no production, before even receiving any production royalties? That doesn't seem like underpaid to me.  But hey, I wish I could get that kind of money.  Maybe it seems like underpaid to the people who got it, I don't know?

I know you are frustrated with your royalty situation, but... saying that $6,000-$8,000 an acre ($12,000-16,000 if you get an extension) before royalties is underpaid is pretty crazy.  I mean, you could possibly get the primary term money and not even have a well drilled on your property, meaning you wouldn't be subjected to the stolen NGLs and royalties...

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Permalink Reply by Tusc-county-man on March 29, 2016 at 11:03am

G.H..............

If the O/G companies planned on paying 12-16K/acre......they did so knowing they still be making a profit!  They are not Charity organizations.

Is 8K underpaid?   Perhaps not if they follow the lease  and  paid the landowner their fair share.

So much for all the talk when the leasing frenzy started and they were "partnering" with landowners.

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Permalink Reply by G.H. on March 30, 2016 at 12:40am

I agree with you, they are not charity organizations.  And landowners deserve their fair share.  And unfair deductions/an unfair royalty are DEFINITELY a problem in a lot of cases.

At the same time, the oil and gas companies are taking on a lot of risk in paying the bonuses on the land and then paying the costs of production.  If the well is a complete failure or produces very little, it doesn't cost the landowner anything, but it cost the gas company millions.  I'd bet that some of these companies are really hurting on the leases they paid $6000-8000 an acre for in light of the current oil and gas prices, especially if they overpaid in the wrong areas, which I am sure can and did happen.  Probably difficult to turn a profit right now in some areas that they paid a lot in.  They probably could turn a profit at 12-16k an acre in a lot of places when oil was $110 and gas was $3-4.  Do they deserve it?  Probably, yeah.  That's part of the risk, and also some of these situations were probably just bad business choices.

And the "partnering" talk is your run of the mill business/sales/political BS.  If you can't see through that talk, then maybe someone else should negotiate for you. 

I guess all I was trying to say in my response was that underpaid definitely exists, but so does being fairly paid or maybe even sometimes overpaid.  I try to find a middle ground on most things... two sides to every story, not everything is black and white, etc....

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