eCORP & Tioga County Landowners Become Partners in Lease Deal
eCORP International and the Tioga County (NY) Landowners Group, also known as Southern Tier Energy Partners (STEP), released details of their new deal to lease 135,000 acres in Tioga County, NY with an eye to using LPG waterless fracking (press release below). It is an interesting deal—not at all typical of the usual leases between drillers and landowners. Perhaps it’s the way of the future in a low commodity gas price environment?
Here’s the low down: eCORP and STEP crafted a deal that makes landowners majority owners of shell companies that control the land. That is, the landowners will become “drillers,” or rather silent partners with the main driller, eCORP—but partners nonetheless, and they collectively will be majority partners, with eCORP a minority partner. eCORP and STEP are tying the knot and getting married—for this deal.
Read More “eCORP & Tioga County Landowners Become Partners in Lease Deal”
BP has entered the Utica Shale play by signing a lease agreement with with the Associated Landowners of the Ohio Valley (ALOV) group to lease 84,000 acres in Trumbull County, OH. Not sure why, but BP and the ALOV group officially are not disclosing the terms of the deal (as you’ll see in the press release below). However, terms have already leaked:
In one of the best “round up” articles MDN has seen, journalist Bob Downing from the Akron Beacon Journal gives a rundown of who’s drilling where in Ohio’s Utica Shale. From the introduction of the article:
A group of 18 Tioga County, NY landowners have sued Inflection Energy to overturn Inflection’s “force majeure” claim to extend the lease on their collective 1,200 acres. A force majeure clause is written into most gas lease contracts. It means a driller can automatically extend the length of the lease if there are unforeseen events that hinder the terms of the contract—in this case commencement of drilling—from happening.
The Utica Landowner Group of eastern Ohio has just cut a deal with Antero Resources for what is believed to be the highest amount paid yet for a lease deal: $5,900 per acre for a signing bonus, and 21 percent royalties. The deal covers land in Belmont, Monroe and Noble counties in Ohio.