Thankfully, I knew an oil and gas attorney, was adept at doing research, and had time to spare. Was able to negotiate an 18-page monster of a lease for myself and several thousand neighbors; the money came easy, it was the lease language that mattered.
For some inane reason, people think that if you question any part of the fracking, you must be some tree-hugging commie-loving anti-American. In truth, you only want people to be educated about their rights before they enter into a legally binding contractual agreement. Once those rights are signed over, you can't claim them later.
When it comes to oil and gas leasing, it's buyer beware. I wouldn't line my birdcage with a Producer 88 lease, and neither should anyone else.
You’re right. There is no real connection between fracking and leasing land. Fracking is an operational process. Leasing is a legal process of transfering rights. But every royalty owner always has the right to participate in the well. The guys who get screwed are the ones who own surface rights, but not the mineral rights. Yet the courts have ruled that those owning mineral rights have the right to produce those minerals and receive the value for them. And the cheapest way of producing them is to sign a lease which effectively gives the majority to a producer who is willing to invest capital.
But folks don’t want to hear about the lies that are told while landmen secure those rights, or how they repeatedly twist or misrepresent things, or how the rules change once those rights are secured.
I’ve been a landman for some 35 years and have made many a landowner very happy campers for all the royalty monies they have made on Producer’s 88 lease forms with only five or so paragraphs of changes. Your comments are food for the Matt Damon’s of the world.
You can take those words above and shove them where the sun don’t shine.