Consent to Assign — A Scourge Upon Your Lease
As landmen in the field, an often mentioned request by mineral owners is that the lease not be assignable without consent of the lessor. On the surface this is a perfectly reasonable request, because Mr. Johnny just wants to make sure that he knows who holds his lease and that they are good folks. Unfortunately this clause can cause all sorts of heart burn later down the road. Most legal departments draft this clause with a caveat, “such consent will not be unreasonably withheld.” Unfortunately most leases don’t define the word ‘unreasonable’, and there are a multitude of perfectly reasonable-reasons ...
SB873 in Texas To Require Permits for O&G Water Wells
Current law exempts oil and gas companies from the permitting requirement for wells used for “drilling or exploration”. However, SB873, a bill in the Texas legislature hopes to change that by requiring a permit for wells used by oil & gas operators. TIPRO has been attempting negotiating a compromise on this bill, but recently informed the AAPL that those negotiations had not been successful. Jim Dewbre, President of the AAPL, sent out a letter today urging a grass-roots effort for those with business in Texas to contact their state representatives to defeat this bill. As per the letter, this bill ...
Land Management Systems – An Overview
Land management systems (LMS) are used by a variety of companies to manage their assets. Some of the companies that utilize land systems are E&P companies, mining companies, law firms, pipeline companies, and royalty partnerships. These systems maintain an electronic catalog of leases, company owned fee lands, rights-of-way, unit designations, and any other type of agreement that may need to be tracked. These systems not only allow easy record keeping and reporting, but also provide help in managing those properties. When an organizations land assets become too complex to be managed via spreadsheet, it is time to evaluate the purchase ...
Fractions Are Not Your Friend!
Fraction are not your friend. Those of you who have taken the RL/RPL/CPL certification exams will remember a section discussing this issue, and those of you who haven’t become certified (yet) will have run into it in the field. However, this is an issue that you might miss completely if you aren’t looking for it. Here’s why: Tim owns a 1/4 mineral interest in Tract A. Tim conveys to John a 1/8 mineral interest. What mineral interest do Tim and John own? Does John own 1/8 of the minerals under Tract A? Or does John own 1/8 of Tim’s 1/4 ...
Contest: A Year of WriteThat.name For Free! (Contest Over)
If you read the article I recently wrote about WriteThat.name, you’ll be expecting this contest. The folks over at WriteThat.name have volunteered to give away a free year of their premium service to one of our members. To enter the contest you should be using Gmail, Outlook (Desktop Version), or Google Apps Email. You need to do two things to get in the contest: Sign Up for Email Updates from LandmanInsider.com. You can choose to get an email whenever new articles are posted, or only once a week. Leave a comment on this page, so we know you are interested ...
My Newest Networking Tool – WriteThat.name
As some of you might now, I occasionally write about companies or products that you will like, do really cool things, or meet a need that I have. A problem I have had for a while is that through all the social networking and emails I’ve amassed a ridiculously sized contacts database in Gmail. The size isn’t the problem though, my problem is that I couldn’t possibly take the time to update all the contacts as people move between companies, cities, and phone numbers. Everyone knows that I think networking is important, and you can’t network too well if you ...
Gloom and Doom: What’s a Landman to do?
It’s probably safe to say that we have all personally experienced, or had a good friend who has personally experienced some downtime over the last few years. The United States is swamped in uneconomic dry gas, and even some of the wet gas is not worth drilling. Historic oil plays have been a place to hide, but by their very nature these plays require a certain amount of skill not all possess. I’ve seen a ramp-up over the last six months of experienced landmen who are looking for work, and I thought it was time to put some thoughts down ...
What Have You Done This Month to Better Yourself? A Challenge.
Over the last few months I’ve gotten so many phone calls and emails from great people in the land business who are looking for work. One of the first things I always ask them is “What have you done lately?” The answer I usually get is some variation of “well I was working for so and so and doing this and that and then the plug got pulled on the project.” Then I have to re-phrase my question, and ask them what they’ve done for their own professional development lately. More often than not I get a bit of silence ...
NAPE East 2013 – Who is Exhibiting?
I’ve been hearing a lot of discussion about NAPE East lately. The event is being held April 10th-12th in Pittsburgh, PA, and it will be very similar to the NAPE we are all familiar with. Albeit in a smaller form (at least to start with!). There has been a good deal of conversation between people trying to decide whether to go this year, or see what attendance is like and consider going next year. In an attempt to help some of you make the decision I wrangled a (partial) list of the exhibitors at NAPE East for 2013. So here’s ...
HAPL South Texas Social 2013 – A Great Event
I had the good fortune to attend the HAPL South Texas Social Thursday night (March 21, 2013), and I must admit that I had a great time (along with about 200 others). I’ve never been to Armadillo Palace, but it was a great venue. You’ll know you’ve found Armadillo Palace when you see the HUGE armadillo outside the building. The South Texas Social Committee, headed up by Joe Dichiara, did a great job. The process of getting a name tag and armband at the door was quick and painless, and they even had door prizes (yours truly won one!). ...
