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Permalink Reply by Dexter Green on July 29, 2014 at 5:59am

More interesting question: why isn't anyone concerned that drilling two wells instead of four makes this unit uneconomical?

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Permalink Reply by Alan Bowers on July 29, 2014 at 2:22pm

The staff attorney for Eclipse, as noted in the documents filed, is Anthony Jesko.  He used to represent land owners against the Oil and Gas companies. He was and is very good at what he does.  He had assisted many land owners that had come into the ALOV office back when it was still up and running.

ODOT's acreage appears to be a small portion according to the documents filed.

If an O & G company force pools a land owner the land owner is limited in what they can do to fight back.  However, if you force pool a State Agency there is a bit more they can do to let the O & G Company know that they weren't happy with what the O & G Company did.

It does not seem right that Eclipse can say either take a Net Lease that Eclipse wrote or take 12.5% on the gross with no protection of a lease and expect they can get away with it.

If you read back through some of the previous rulings on Forced Pooling Applications Chief Simmers has ruled that the O & G Company had give a higher percentage than 12.5% and also awarded additional terms for the land owner.  Unfortunately Chief Simmers has not been consistent in his Forced Pooling decisions.

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Permalink Reply by arminius on July 30, 2014 at 4:42am

Thanks Phillip for posting this.  I've been waiting for this to happen.  As a matter of public policy, the state of Ohio, as a landowner (ODOT), cannot exempt itself from the same laws it enacts for other landowners.

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