A number of years ago some land was leased to Winchester. A vertical CV well was drilled and the section was cured. Winchester turned into Exco then Compass and finally Indigo. Exco sold the Hanesville rights to Petrohawk who sold them to BHP and then to BPX.


In the section to the south Justiss drilled a vertical CV well and later Chesapeake drilled a Hanesville well.
The surveys for both the Winchester and Justiss wells show the respective drilling rights end at the common section line. This was confirmed with Justiss.


The BHP survey looks like it ends on the section line but the coordinates are just to the north of the section line leaving out about an acre. The actual section line is not shown on the BHP survey.


Two years after Chesapeake drilled their well they resurveyed and included the part of the section to the north that was not in the BHP survey. They declared this land as unleased and paid as an unleased well owner.


Both the BHP and Chesapeake surveys were done by the same survey company.


My question is: Is this actually unleased since it is included in the CV surveys and lease document indicates that the entire portion of the land was to be leased? If it is leased, who is it leased to, Indigo, BPX or Chesapeake? I have tried to contact Chesapeake and they will not respond. I realize that this is a question for an O & G atty but I don’t want to spend a dollar to get a dime back.


Any responses would be appreciated.

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Was the CV well a unit well?  Or a lease well?  Without knowing, no one can answer.  And what do you mean by "cured"?  Surface locations mean nothing for horizontal wells.  What is important is the first "take poiint" which is the first perforation in the lateral and should be shown on a well plat.

Instead of a game of 21 questions, it would be easier to state the sections and wells so that we can look at what you are looking at.

Skip here are the details: All appear to be unit wells.


My land is in sec 009 -14N-12W. Original Vertical well was CV RASu75:Evans 9 S/N 231876 The survey is on the permit to drill page 3.
There are six Hanesville wells (four are on pads in section 004). HA RA SU139 Evans 9H alt -1 S/N 245975 has a survey on page 7 of the permit to drill.


The other section is 016-14N-12W. Original Vertical well was CV RA SU128;SM19027 16 S/N 236129. The survey is on the permit to drill page 3. Owner is Justiss Oil they confirmed that the survey does not include any of section 9.


The Chesapeake well is HA RA SU117:CHK MIN16-14-12H S/N243638 The pad is located in section 9. The first survey is in the permit to drill page 3. This survey was redone to include part of section 9. That survey is not on the well files. Hopefully I have attached it as a pdf below. A couple of things to note on the survey. It was completed 10/19/16 almost 5 years after the first one. I was not notified until mid 2018. Also note what the survey did at the north east corner. When the unit line crossed into Red River Parish they moved the line back to the section line. That corner says “state agency lease”. Did they not want to bring that to the state’s attention?


Thanks for all your help.

Help!  When I try to add a file it shows up in the list but does not add.  What am I missing?

Depends on the file extension.  If you saves the well plat as a pdf, use the paper clip icon.  If you saved it as a jpg file, use the image icon.

Chesapeake%20revised%20survey.pdf

Thanks.  That worked.  Forgot to discuss "Cured". That's what my father and grandfather called a lease when it was held by production.  Probably something from the 20's or 30's.

Don't bother, I pulled the unit surveys.  Drilling units are like layers in a cake.  Each one has a Field Order approved by the state which defines the boundaries.  Usually the units are based on a section but not always,  They can be the east half of one section with the west half of an adjoining section for example.  And there are irregular sections especially along rivers as is the case in the Caspiana Field with the Red River.  In some sections there may be a Pettit unit, a Hosston unit, one or more CV units and a Haynesville unit.  Just different layers in the cake descending in depth.  If you look at the unit surveys, CV RA SU75 and HA RA SU139, you see that that Section 9 based unit is different in that the unit boundaries are slightly different for the CV and the HA.  The HA RA SU130 unit has the slight dog leg which follows the Red River channel at that point and includes what appears to be part of the NE/4 of Section 16.  That little addition is owned by the state.  BHP (KCS) applied for the unit and the state approved it that way. There was no requirement to make the HA unit the same as the preceding CV unit.

That brings me back to the original question.  Is the piece of section 9 claimed by Chesapeake covered by the lease to Winchester? I would think that since they had the original lease and had the right to transfer sections to other companies that they still had control of that area.

It the Winchester lease has been kept in force through production with no more than 3 consecutive months of no reported production, the lease is still live.  If it was an all depths lease not including a vertical pugh clause that would have released the deep rights (Haynesville) then it has simply been assigned to CHK or force pooled in the Field Order for HA RA SUS, Section 16.  I'm unsure of the importance of your question since tracts 7B, 7C and 7D encompassing that small offset are state owned.

Maybe I do not understand this but, Chesapeake states that that the small part of section 9 is an unleased owner and is being treated as such.  If Winchester owns a lease then they are responsible for paying royalty in accordance with the lease.

Years ago I had a Samson Lease.  Pinnacle drilled a well in the lease area.  Samson said they did not participate but I was able to collect royalty from Samson. I am thinking the same principle applies.

HA RA SU117, section 16, has the same cut out section so that tract(s) were not force pooled in that unit.  Both HA units, Section 9 and Section 16, show that cut out as being State Lease 19027A to the Department of Wildlife & Fisheries.  If there is a title dispute between the state and a land owner, that is usually noted in unit survey plats.  No such notation appears for either unit.  The minerals in that cut out are owned by the state and under lease.  As state owned minerals they would not be covered under any lease other than one to the state.

Regarding CV SU128, Section 16, there is no unit survey in the database.  Therefore JUSTISS OIL COMPANY, INC. is in violation of Office of Conservation regulations that state that a unit survey must be submitted within 90 days of first production.  The well plat for the two Section CV wells may or may not be official.  As far as doing something yourself you could contact the compliance division director of the OOC and request that Justiss provide a survey.  You could ask an attorney is lacking an official unit survey, the Field Order would control for what tracts were included.

Here is the original Field Order for CV SU RA 128, Section 16.  The area in question is shown as owned by the state.

CV%20RA%20SU128%20CASPIANA%2016-14-12.pdf

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