AAPL Annual Meeting 2013 – A Quick Recap
I had the opportunity to attend the AAPL Annual Meeting last week and I wanted to share some thoughts about it. I won’t go into too much detail on the the particular events, education or festivities — but if you’d to see more about it then you can check it out at the AAPL Annual Meeting website page. As some of you know, I don’t work as a full-time employee for an oil & gas company. This means that I had to make the decision to pay for the cost of attending this function myself. It was not inexpensive after ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
The Young and the Restless: Old Hands vs New Blood
If you get enough landmen together for enough time, the conversation will eventually turn to criticism of whatever group isn’t represented. Whether it’s all the new landmen who who don’t dress the party, wear headphones and don’t know ‘nuthin — or the old luddite landmen who never do anything but tell stories about better times. Of course I have an opinion on the matter, just like everyone else, and if you haven’t had the ‘good fortune’ to be a part of one of these conversations then you don’t get out enough. We could make a mile long list of transgressions that ...
Your Words Matter, So Double Check Them
Whether you are interacting online, by mail, or in person the words you choose are important. Equally important is the way you use them. Snap judgements will be made about you based on spelling, grammar, and context. Now, I know that many of you are thinking “oh great here comes the spelling police…” So I’m going to try to sway your judgement with a few examples I’ve seen lately, I’ll try to anonymize them enough to protect the ignor-innocent. The first example is the picture you see above. I’ll go ahead and tell you (if you haven’t figured it out) ...
Landman Websites I Check Often
I thought I would do a quick post this week just detailing some of the places on the internet that I frequently visit. I also felt that it would be a nice thing to give credit to these sources, as they often give me inspiration for the blogs I post here. So without further ado, here is my list of places that I go: www.landpro.com/landnews.asp Paul Nielsen runs LandNews, and has done so for quite some time. If you haven’t ever met Paul, he’s a great guy and does the industry a wonderful service by running LandNews. He posts available ...
Continuous Drilling, Operations, and Development – What’s the Difference?
There are so many lease provisions that can be thrown into an agreement that often times the meanings can become skewed. More often than not, they can even mean different things to different people. It’s important to communicate with the other party to determine the intent, and ensure that the language conveys the intent of both parties. So, as the start of my series exploring various lease provisions I’m going to discuss continuous drilling, continuous operations, and continuous development. The truth is that all three of these clauses are savings clauses, and are therefore very similar in application. Generally speaking, ...
The IRWA: Is It Right For You?
You often hear landmen talking about the AAPL (American Association of Professional Landmen), but it’s not as often that you hear about the IRWA (International Right of Way Association). In fact, it’s fairly common to meet right of way agents who aren’t familiar with the IRWA. I think it is a good organization, and that more than a few of you might benefit from including them in your professional networking portfolio. You might think, from the name, that it is comprised of only right of way agents, but you couldn’t be further from the truth. The IRWA has members from ...
