Leasing Mineral Rights-need info/thoughts (Fort Worth, Arlington: how much, attorney, house)

[mompooh3]

Just received a letter in the mail from TIP, Inc requesting to "lease the minerals beneath your lot for natural gas exploration". We live in Ft. Worth (the "other side of the tracks" with the Keller ISD "outcasts" ), so we don't have a large lot. I know there was another part of Ft. Worth promised all these royalties, and from what I (a lay person!) understand, it wasn't everything they were promised.

So any thoughts, experience on this issue? Would this be dangerous as well?

Thanks in advance!

[blueskies49]

Last summer my daughter and her husband, who live in south Arlington down by the Mansfield border, received a letter as well. I had previously read in the Star-Telegram about other communities in Fort Worth receiving royalties of various amounts, some for several months at a time. I told my daughter to sign it! They received a $200 one-time check.

[tailoma]

Check with your neighbors. Have they received letters also? Perhaps getting an attorney to get the best deal for a group might be better than going it alone.

Don't be too hasty. How close to you will be drill be? Consider the cons also and long term effects. Look at past Star-Telegram articles on gas drilling.

[Lindsey_Mcfarren]

I have family and friends in the Cleburne area. I hear the drilling is a VERY noisy process but there is alot of money to be made there. I would look into it before you signed the rights over to someone else.

[tailoma]

Here's the Barnett Shale blog on the Star Telegram site.

Barnett Shale

[loves2read]

most people are not going to get very much after their signing bonus and it is really to their advantage if they get together and as a group try for as much from the company wanting to lease the rights as they can

check out how some of the subdivisions have held together and gotten much better terms than others...
if you don't sign you get pooled anyway--but if you can work together make sure you get as much clout as you can...

[catman]

I live in the Ryan Place neighborhood in south Ft Worth, and was against all the drilling at first. But the neighborhood association hammered out a good deal with one of the drilling companies, which moved the drill site from inside my neighborhood to an industrial area about a mile away where it won't bother many people, so I signed it. $15K/acre signing bonus and 25% royalties sounded pretty good to me.

[loves2read]

you are right--that is a good deal--the size of you acerage control how much you eventually might earn from royalty payout--most house lots are like .25 acre--that is not a significant amount unless the well is really a good producer...

[DFF]

$15 k per acre and 25% sounds good till you find out how much the gas that is extracted is worth and how much it costs them to get it. Eveyone that signed that lease transfered about $500k per acre to the developer. See Enjoy Gas to find out what minerals are worth.

[DFF]

Almost all wells in the Barnett are good producers. They extract the gas from about 20 acres and produce about $20 million in gas. But if the operators pool a lot with 600 acres the royalties get substantially reduced since one well can not get all the gas that should be recovered. See Enjoy Gas for more info.