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Permalink Reply by GoshDarn on September 20, 2012 at 9:51

MKM:

My family has land near Ashland, but it wasn't in that pooled unit.

Also, we never signed a lease with CHK since they only made repeated peanut offers per several rounds of bad-faith negotiations.

As of today, I know of no other operator leasing the deep Haynesville rights in that general vicinity.  Yet there has been some talk of so-called "top" leasing to drill shallower "oil" wells (i.e., sorta wildcat stuff) -- a bit to the south and east of Ashland and also to the west and north (a little ways).

Yet we've not been approached for such ourselves.

Note:  There is a legal issue as to the possibility that Chesapeake might have colluded with one or more other operators so as to divide up the unit leasing in the Ashland area so as to keep the lease prices artificially low.  And this is somewhat based on another court case from another state where there are smoking-gun e-mails seeming to imply that CHK did collude on price fixing (which is illegal).

Of course, such court cases are quite complicated and tough to prosecute, which means a darn determined law firm favoring the local landowners would possibly need to get involved if enough landowners thought that they'd been taken advantage of by illegal activity on CHK's part.

So, it's kinda wait and see.

Also, until natural gas prices climb back up to more profitable levels or until CHK flips its Ashland units to another operator -- the likelihood of more leasing/drilling in and around Ashland is sorta iffy at best.  (Yet, of course, I could be wrong, too.)

Note:  I know a number of landowners who aren't expecting any new leasing activity for several years, if that.

Hope this helps.

Best of luck to you.

GD

 

 

Permalink Reply by MKM on September 20, 2012 at 13:38

 

Thanks GoshDarn. I was afraid of that.....hope we all turn out to be wrong!