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Comment by Char on Thursday

Hi Rock Man -  this is good info and helps to give more clarity - but this neighbourhood is surrounded by pipelines and tanks ( half a mile away) actually Exxon blew up several years ago, took out an entire community and had to relocate the remaining residence.   so.... this is why I'm curious as to why these communities are not being compensated as it just seems a bit obvious that the Trend is in the middle of the neighbourhood, large storage tanks are in the neighbourhood and the processing plants are part of the neighbourhood?  We are still trying to find out if our property has been part of the leases that were not compensated because we didn't know better.  It just seems a bit egregious - We have researched our property in particular which was purchase in the 1890's  in the Trend and has never been sold but passed down to one(1) owner at this point.  so very curious as  to how to find out why we were never compensated.  

Comment by Rock Man on Thursday

Hi Char, thanks for the response. 

A couple of points - there is no guarantee that the production Tuscaloosa runs through this area / especially if the closest control is 5-10 miles away. Things can change very quickly in the subsurface as to the presences of high-quality O&G reservoir. Lots of heterogeneity.

Second point is a better explanation "town lot play".

Prior to drilling any vertical well anywhere, leases covering 100% of the mineral interests for about 640 acres need to be tied up. This is a tedious and time intensive process - especially with some mineral owner interest subdivided over the years via heirship after the passing of original owners (and this may have happened multiple times over several generations). In many cases, there are multiple mineral owners for any one tract (I have seen as many as over 100 owners that have to be tracked down - and sometimes these owners are difficult to find).

The above pertains to more rural / undeveloped areas. Within urban areas, individual tract ownership is usually less than 1 acre per tract - and normally 0.2 to 0.3 acres per tract. Same situation as in rural areas - tracking down and finding the multiple mineral owners for any tract is time and cost extensive. Companies will tend to avoid town lot plays due the significant added costs of leasing to wrap up a 640 acre unit prior to drilling.

Parallel to the leasing, finding a spot in an urban area to drill and complete a well is often difficult. Operator will need 3-4 acres minirnum to build location and set a rig. And then create a permanent production pad (smaller - 2 acres). Then there needs to be the ability to run natural gas gathering lines from the well to the main gas gathering systems / processing plants. These cannot be the local gas lines that supply gas to the populace - these need to be much larger gas pipelines / and getting these permitted, right of way approved and constructed is very expensive (and extremely difficult within an urban area).

Oil can be trucked out - but that can be problematic due to continual heavy traffic.

In some case, there may not be surface location available to drill in an urban area - so a directional well can be drilled from a more accessible location (sometimes up to one mile away) - but this significantly adds to the costs to exploit the O&G potential.

Lots of hoops and significant extra costs associated with any urban / developed area as ton O&G operations. And these extra costs impact the bottom line and economics of any drilling project.

Comment by Char on Thursday

Hi Rock Man - Thanks for your response -  Yes We have heard of numerous wells - not more then 5-10 miles from our area and the neighbourhood has pipes running down the entire neighbourhood along the tracks that is parallel to the community. Not sure what "town-lot" means but I think its egregious to by pass the community robbing it and its community members the wealth that it has afforded other communities north of the city - that is NOT a minority community..   

Comment by Rock Man on July 3, 2025 at 11:53

Were any wells drilled near or under this area that ended up producing from the Tuscaloosa? No wells could have been drilled under these areas without having the minerals leased and royalties paid.

Odds are that industry avoided this area for leasing and drilling due to the complexities and costs of doing a "town lot" play. 

Many successful O&G trends are not developed and are untapped under metropolitan / urban areas due to the town lot complexity and cost issue.