I need help from other Lessors. I'm just in process of running into this dilemma and I didn't see it coming:
I only own a single piece of land, a single chunk, and it's all together. But my land is split among more than two drilling units.
When I was named into the first unit everything was fine, probably why I did not foresee this. Upon receiving that first unit declaration I was told, right within the declaration, the size in acres of the entire unit. My royalty owner report for the unit gives me my percentage participation. Thus, it's very straightforward to calculate the number of acres I have in that first unit.
I assumed, wrongly as things turn out, that this approach would be taken with succeeding units into which my land was placed. In the end, I again (wrongly) assumed, I would be able to calculate the number of acres of my land in each of the several units it occupied. This, I knew up front, would be pivotal to knowing I was collecting royalty payments for all my acres.
Here is what just happened:
A second portion of my land was placed into a unit. I received the unit declaration. There is no mention in this declaration of the total number of acres in the unit.
At the time I signed my lease I failed to foresee something like this. I have no provision which guarantees me access to unit size data. This was my bad.
Anyway, it would be helpful to learn the experiences of others in this situation. In particular, are your unit declarations routinely providing you the (overall) size of the unit? Because in the end, when all our land has been unitized, we need a way to be sure they are paying a royalty on all the acres we own and have leased.
Even landowners all of whose land is in only one unit need to run this check. It's necessary to divide your number of acres by the total size of your unit, in order to calculate your participation percentage, then to check and see if that number agrees with your royalty owner's report. The common bottom line is that you can't do this, you cannot perform this check, without knowing the overall size of the unit. And you cannot know that unless the gasco tells you.
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Finnbear
Am in PA. Think this issue is the same for royalty owners, though, regardless state.
I know in Ohio you can get a copy of the unitization from the County Recorder's Office.
Finnber
It's the same here in PA. Trouble is, the needed, critical unit size information might not be in the unit declaration as filed with the Recorder's Office!
That's what happened to me. That's the reason for this thread.
In Ohio they file a plat map with the County Recorder which shows all the acreage.
Frank,
May I ask who is the drilling company??
Would prefer not to ID the company at this time. Doing so might be too personally identifying.
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