If you live in Texas, read the letter from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. YOU can't afford not to.
Brutal tactics
Mike Norman's Thursday column speaks mildly of the gangster-like tactics of the oil and gas operators in Fort Worth and other communities in the Barnett Shale. (See: "Don't understand oil and gas? What's wrong?")
The industry many times ceased negotiations after the July 2008 crash of the gas boon. Industry representatives, now with partial but not fully developable lease tracts, are back in neighborhoods offering not only paltry bonuses, but leases with reduced royalty shares, unfair charge-backs against royalties, pre-waiver of all activities they deem necessary to operate, and pre-agreement to support variances to city and other governmental rules or laws, including setbacks and pipeline easements. Want that on your property?
The landmen have been bold and say if you do not sign this one-sided, inequitably paid lease then they will file a Rule 37 against your property and will take your gas minerals anyway. Envision a gun held to a property owner's head.
These are brutal tactics supported by the Texas Railroad Commission. The fact that a Chesapeake spokesperson used the word "generosity" is nothing but a perverse statement. Chesapeake and the others need to be exposed by the media for what they really are.
-- Gary Hogan, Fort Worth
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