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Permalink Reply by JREwing on July 11, 2013 at 8:08am

Vista is a shallow well producer.  We have had both Vista and another company called Atlas in Mercer County for years and years.  Vista assigned the deep rights of their leases to Swepi in Mercer County which is how Swepi acquired their acreage in Mercer County.  Atlas did the same thing with their deep rights, but to Chevron.  Hope that helps.

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Permalink Reply by Gas heir on July 11, 2013 at 3:40pm

They drilled shallow wells all around me. They have been a good company to deal with thus far! And as JREwing said...... they sold deep rights to Shell in Mercer County.

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Permalink Reply by Jim Litwinowicz on July 12, 2013 at 1:31am

Vista is a shallow well producer but they don't drill the big horizontal wells.  If they approach you about signing a lease, make sure you put in depth restrictions so that they only have rights to shallow gas.  Or make them pay the full amount of bonus money that the big boys are paying in your area.  Otherwise they will lease you for a low ball rate and then assign the Utica and other deep rights at a huge profit for them.

In Venango, Crawford and Mercer Co you should get at least $3000/acre 17% royalty with no deductions if the lease has no depth or strata restrictions. You should also be sure to have limited a unit size such as 40 to 60 acres.  This would also protect you from being assigned to big boys at a bottom dollar rate.

Some of these smaller companies are leasing property telling people they are just going to drill shallow wells but the lease is the standard lease "to the center of the earth" type. When they assign the deep rights do the big outfits, they get to keep the difference in both bonus and royalty rates.

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Permalink Reply by Jason Bablak on July 22, 2013 at 8:38am

I spoke to the land man today, and they are only looking for shallow leases, down to 3,000 feet to drill for oil.  Does anyone have any thoughts or experience with signing a shallow lease in terms of future deep leasing?  Not sure if this would have any impact on a future shale gas lease

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