My grandfather left some land that was leased by Dolet Hills for coal to his children many years ago. When my father died, his portion of the land was split between me and my 5 siblings. We all receive yearly lease checks and one of my sisters is paying taxes on the land. Chesapeake is now drilling on the land through force pooling, I believe. I have been living in NYC since 2003, so I am unable to find out much from here. My brother was the only one of us to accept their offer, along with what I assume are the owners of the other tracts. Anyway, he is now the only one receiving royalty checks. What are my rights regarding this?

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You have a couple of choices.  You can contact Chesapeake, and see if they would enter into a lease with you.  They may choose not to,  You also need to go to the "Unleased Mineral Owners" group on this site, and read the post called "Louisiana Unleased Mineral Owners - Must Read."  That will outline the obligation of CHK to you, if you are unleased.  Read that, and if you have more questions, let us know.  

Also, if you share the section, township, and range with us, we can tell you the status of any wells.

Thanks, I will as soon as I find the papers!

Depends on what state you are in. Is Dolet Hills in Louisiana?

Andrew,

Yes, the Dolet Hills Lignite Mine is in southeastern DeSoto Parish.  Its extent is quite large -- at some time or another, all or part of about 20 (that's a guess) sections have been it.  I believe mining began in the early 1980's, and still continues today.  (You can go on Google Earth and see photos of the ongoing strip mining.)  Much of the mining has been completed, and the land restored and released (I think).  The 40-year leases will expire later in this decade.  

T,

It's curious that you have been receiving "yearly lease checks." These sound like royalty payments from the lignite mine. In that case your mineral interests would already been leases and there would likely be no further agreements necessary. Then again, your brother would be getting the same royalty checks as you.

If CHK or anyone did not actually have permission to drill your property, you would be a UMI and you should check out that group for info.

The "yearly lease checks" are advance royalty payments from the lignite mine.  They arrive every September, right?  The lignite leases were signed in the late 1970's.  To date, some of that land has yet to be mined for lignite.  The yearly lease check is an advance on any future lignite royalties.  This payment is made to keep the lease in effect until actual mining begins on the land.  Once mining begins, this advance royalty is subtracted out from the actual royalties.  My understanding is the lignite leases run until about 2018.

Let me add one more thing to my prior post...  The fact that your lignite is leased does not affect your right to lease your oil and gas rights.  The lignite lease does not tie up your oil and gas rights.  However, (I believe) there are times when the lignite company has the right to operations on the surface and could make it hard for the oil and gas people to drill.  For example, if the lignite people have plans to mine in a particular area in the near future, the oil and gas people would likely not elect to put a well there.  (Remember, this is strip mining - huge swaths of land are dug up to do this.)  If you go to www.haynesvilleplay.com, and look at the map of Haynesville well completions in southern DeSoto Parish, you will see an open area around T11N-R11W where there are no wells.  I have to guess that this is where lignite operations are ongoing.

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