Enverus Launches Free Online Tool to Track Mineral Rights, Royalties
It’s not often a new product announcement catches our attention. Enverus, previously known as Drillinginfo, sent MDN a product announcement for the company’s first consumer-facing product. It’s called MineraliQ and if you are an individual landowner or mineral rights owner, you are going to love this. MineraliQ is an online service that provides everything you need to know about your minerals in one place, including payments, well locations, and important activity near your minerals that you should know about. The new service will even help you estimate how much your mineral rights are worth now and in the future. This is seriously cool stuff. And it’s free!
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An interesting conversation was held on Tuesday during the Pennsylvania Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on the budget for PA in 2022. Secretary of the Dept. of Conservation & Natural Resources (DCNR) Cindy Dunn was there to talk about her agency’s financial needs in the coming year. Also there was PA Sen. Gene Yaw and PA Sen. Joe Pittman, both Republicans. Yaw and Pittman asked Dunn why her agency doesn’t lease another 22,000 acres of state land for natural gas drilling as a form of “self help” to help fund DCNR’s budget. Great question…
Using investment capital from Preferred Capital Securities, WhiteHawk Energy is buying mineral and royalty rights in southwestern Pennsylvania, primarily in Washington and Green counties, for $52.5 million. The assets include production and cash flow from over 950 horizontal Marcellus Shale wells. The wells are operated by EQT, CNX Resources, and Range Resources.
On Wednesday the Pennsylvania State Senate passed Senate Bill (SB) 806, a bill aimed at providing clarity in the royalty payment statements landowners receive from oil and gas drillers. Sometimes deductions are posted on royalty statements with very little (if any) description of what those deductions are for. SB 806 will clear up the confusion. PA Senator Gene Yaw is the prime sponsor of the bill.
Rising Phoenix Royalties (RPR) announced it has purchased the future royalty payments from a landowner in the Marcellus Shale, in Washington County, PA. This latest purchase by RPR covers 98 acres drilled under by Range Resources. This is not the first RPR transaction we’ve reported on.
In December a jury in Ritchie County, WV awarded the county’s Economic Development Authority (EDA) nearly $1 million in damages in a trespassing case. The case is complicated, but at its heart is the issue of a Marcellus-focused company, Ronald Lane Inc., and land Lane deeded to the local EDA. A lawsuit against Lane alleged the company leased the deeded land for “oil and gas purposes” (to Columbia Gas as a heavy equipment storage facility) and that Lane never told the EDA about the lease nor shared the profits received from that lease.
Back in June, MDN told you about a long-running lawsuit in Tioga County, PA by landowners who claim that UGI has taken their mineral rights as part of operating the Meeker Storage Field, an underground natural gas storage facility (see 
The Pennsylvania Dept. of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) published a notice in the November 20 Pennsylvania Bulletin that it has signed an oil and gas lease agreement with BKV Operating, LLC (Banpu, Thailand’s largest coal mining company and an investor/operator drilling shale wells here) covering 198.5 acres of the Susquehanna River located in Mehoopany and Washington Townships in Wyoming County.
Over the years we’ve covered a number of stories about companies buying future royalty payments from landowners (and rights owners) for an upfront, one lump sum payment now. Back in May, we told you about a relative newcomer to our region doing this, Verde Bio Holdings (see 
EV Royalty Partners, an affiliate of EnerVest Ltd., has retained Oil & Gas Asset Clearinghouse for the sale of a Utica Shale overriding royalty interest (ORRI) package across multiple counties in Ohio. The package on offer includes portions of ORRI in some 340,894 acres. The acreage is actively leased and developed by Encino Energy, Ascent Resources, and Southwestern Energy. Bids are due by Dec. 2nd.
Last week MDN was (as far as we can tell) the first to bring you news of a new lawsuit filed in Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas against EQT alleging the company had not made required royalty payments to at least two residents, and likely many more residents (see 
In early 2019, EQT, the largest natural gas producer in the U.S. (and in the Marcellus/Utica) settled a class action lawsuit in West Virginia with landowners and rights owners ending EQT’s practice of post-production deductions from royalty checks (see 
Ever hear of a “market enhancement” royalty clause? If you’re a Pennsylvania landowner, or perhaps a landowner in Ohio and West Virginia, you likely have. Even if you (as a landowner) have a lease that disallows post-production deductions from your royalty check, many leases have market enhancement clauses that allow the driller to deduct certain expenses if they can process the gas and sell it to a distant customer for more money than they can get locally. A higher price for the gas theoretically means you the landowner get a bigger royalty check, right? Not so fast…
An extensive story running in the Youngstown Business Journal tackles the thorny issue of violated expectations for Ohio landowners who thought they would get rich from Utica Shale wells on their land but didn’t. The article contains some good information and is a cautionary story for landowners. However, we’re concerned the story doesn’t present the full picture–that some landowners DO get significant revenue from royalties and signing bonuses.