freshoilandstone t1_iyi0esr wrote
Chesapeake killed our first well with those drop-down-a-hole exploratory charges. Caused a disruption (small earthquake) that collapsed the well, next day we were pumping mud. Of course they did nothing to rectify it so $18,000 later we had a new well drilled.
Anybody who doesn't live with natural gas drilling and blindly supports it can go fuck themselves. They exploited the "uninformed" land owners who naively thought they were all getting rich - you know, like all rural Oklahomans are 🙄 - and ambushed the state before any environmental protections were in place and while the politicians were in full feeding frenzy mode. People around us signed gas leases at $5/acre, even less, and the companies rolled in with big-ass access roads to big-ass pads with big-ass towers and just obliterated the landscape. And now somewhere along the line some gas company ideas man came up with natural gas-fired generators to power the pads; these things are the size and noise equivalent of a diesel locomotive and the folks with pads on their properties have that locomotive right out back all day every day. But hey - they made a little money!
The only positive for us personally, and we're a rarity out here, is that we held out to the bitter end before signing a lease and we knew what we were doing (because we took our time and did some homework and because we learned from our neighbor's mistakes) so we got a high up-front payment for a subsurface-only lease with the best possible royalty agreement. Chesapeake has paid for our house, our land, and they're about to pay for our daughter's college education. But again, we're a rarity. Not saying we were smart, just patient.
melranaway t1_iyi5p9b wrote
The gas industry (or some company connected to the natural gas industry) built a silica sand holding station right outside my town… you should see it blow about in the wind… county commissioners said the feds stepped in and allowed it.
freshoilandstone t1_iyix8ng wrote
I might be mistaken but I think that's the new fracking method - sand rather than the old benzene-containing liquid.
viking2002 t1_iypsbxp wrote
You're mistaken
persechino218 t1_iyj0yyg wrote
Currently fucking myself
freshoilandstone t1_iyk3kdb wrote
persechino218
0 points
·
28 days ago
Red wave coming. Get the tissues ready next week.
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Good call
persechino218 t1_iyk5k6t wrote
Yeah, horrible call thinking people want to better themselves
persechino218 t1_iyk5n3j wrote
Still fucking myself
freshoilandstone t1_iymauc3 wrote
Still not reaping any rewards though are you? While you continue your activity we'll continue averaging $5000/month in royalties. And under the gas is oil, so when/if the gas is finally exhausted the wells will be drilled deeper and the oil extracted. Our daughter is 16 - she'll be receiving royalty checks for the rest of her life.
persechino218 t1_iynooy7 wrote
Nah man I lived in the cess pool known as Philadelphia and could not let conglomerates drill on a row home I rented. I’m glad you’re reaping the rewards tho, and I’ll continue my activity living a happy life supporting people who work hard for a living
freshoilandstone t1_iyods1s wrote
Good for both of us I suppose.
Blind loyalty to the gas companies is fine from the perspective that the drilling/extraction results in job creation but those jobs come from the exploitation of the farmers around here who don't have two nickels to rub together.
Gas companies have been offering leases since the 60's even though no work started until about 10 years ago. So some of these folks with 500 acres or so leased for 50 cents per acre. The leases are self-renewing every five years; all the company has to do is pay the landowner a nominal fee, usually $50. The leases are short but complicated and pretty much every bastard attorney around here was "urged" to get as many signatures as possible as quickly as possible. As a result negotiating for a better deal for the landowner wasn't really a high priority.
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There's three big parts of the lease, although it all runs together as one document:
How much per acre up front to sign
Royalty percentage
How will the royalties be paid
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A lot of people realized they could negotiate the first part but didn't pay enough attention to the other two. So if you got $1000/acre at 12% paid before company expenses you may have thought the deal was pretty good but you would have been taking a royal screwing. "Before expenses" means the gas workers get paid and the equipment bought, etc., out of your royalty cut. It makes a huge difference. As an example, we make our $5000/month off ten acres (we don't make that every month - sometimes it's more sometimes less, but that's an estimated average over the past 7 or 8 years). The lady across the way has 54 acres - she never has gotten more than $500 in a month. I'm not lamenting for myself obviously. What they've paid us paid for our land and our house and they'll be financing our daughter's education and ultimately supplementing our retirement and providing our daughter with a nice monthly income for likely her lifetime. But not everyone got the same deal. Those people who didn't went in all wide-eyed thinking this was the break that would pull them out of the rural poverty cycle and instead turned out to be the break that bought them a new dirt bike every couple years.
MRG_1977 t1_iykyq68 wrote
$5/acre? That can’t possibly be right.
freshoilandstone t1_iyma27g wrote
Oh it's right all right.
Royalties are the other screwing. Unless you had some idea what you were signing when you signed the lease you could wind up with almost nothing. Besides percentage there's "before expenses/after expenses" language that makes a big difference in the amount that shows up in your mailbox.
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