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On Saturday, 8-8-09, at 12:10pm, your Board has made the decision to sign a gas lease with The Caffey Group, L.L.C.
It was determined that our HOA
owns 13.819 acres of land which was multiplied
by the offer of $3,000.00 per acre. The funds
from this transaction will be placed into our
HOA's reserve account.
We are told that 80% of our
community has signed a gas lease with The Caffey
Group. It continues to be the position of this
Board that we, as your Board, are not taking a
position on whether to encourage or discourage
residents to sign with The Caffey Group. The
decision to sign a gas lease is a personal
decision each homeowner needs to make on their
own.
Regards,
Susan McGowan, President
Paul Merrill, Vice President
Nikki Andrews,
Secretary/Treasurer
Gas Lease Update
All, We also understand that the landman is the same gentleman who represented Spartan last year. When one of our neighbors specifically asked what happened with Spartan, Mr. Souder's reply was "it's not my fault.. I'm contracted..." PLEASE take no action until we can collectively discuss this offer.
If you have relevant information regarding
this offer, please respond back. We welcome any and all input /
feedback. Your Parkwood Hill Estates Mineral Rights Committee Gas Lease Update Emercor Land, L.L.C. will be at the clubhouse this Saturday, October 25th from 9:00 - 2:00 pm signing lease agreements. We have attempted to rely upon a committee to investigate this so we could get the best deal for the HOA; however, many of our homeowners have already signed with Emercor Land. This does not mean that you have to sign, but it is ultimately up to each individual homeowner to sign or not to sign with a prospective leasor after weighing the facts. October 22, 2008 Residents of Parkwood Hill On Tuesday, October 21, 2008, a
meeting was held at the clubhouse to sign oil, gas and mineral leases with
Emercor Land, L.L.C. This meeting was arranged by a homeowner within our HOA and
not sanctioned by your Board of Directors. In fact, the Board of Directors was
not consulted about this meeting by the homeowner and no communication has been
received from the homeowner who arranged this meeting. October 16, 2008
 October 15, 2008 Neighbors:
As you may be aware, our neighborhood is
being approached by another company.
Emercor Land, LLC is sending out letters
to acquire oil, gas and mineral leases.
I have attached a copy of the letter
that I have received. The offer is for
$13,000/acre, a 3 year term with the
option to extend for 2 years, and 25%
royalty interest. This offer is very
similar to Spartan Geophysical's offer
and I believe this company is another
middle man trying to acquire leases. I
went to their website http://emercor-land.com/html/Bio_1.html and
I was not impressed. I believe we
should pass on this offer and wait
for Chesapeake or XTO to approach
us. Please let me know if anyone thinks
we should handle this situation in a
different manner.
Thank you,
Dawn Bowen
September 18, 2008 Deeds-on-line research.doc | Title Policy Schedule B.pdfNeighbors: I THINK I have some good news ... I do believe that we (Parkwood Estates) own our mineral rights. I made the trip to the Courthouse on Tuesday and what a mad house that place was. I went to the lady working behind the counter and told her that I would like to research my property to see if I own the mineral rights. She looked at me and said, "Well, you know that you may have to go back to the 1800's and view each Deed along the way". That wasn't very encouraging, but I pressed on. I followed the instructions that Gerry had given me (see attachment) and basically my Deed information was the same that I acquired on-line. You only have to go to the Courthouse if you need to view Deeds prior to 1970. So I decided to high tail it out of there and do my research from home. The problem that I came across is that Continental Homes had renamed my property description to Lot 46, Block 9 Parkwood Estates. So I could not determine who Continental Homes purchased the land from since the legal description had changed. If you are willing to take on the challenge (on-line or manual) of researching your Deed, go to www.nknt.org/countyclerk_E.htm. This will give you the step-by-step process that you will need to follow. So now that I had hit a brick wall, I decided to e-mail DR Horton who is the parent company of Continental Homes. I asked them if they were aware if Continental Homes or any previous owners had reserved the mineral rights. I received an e-mail back very quickly and they said that any information regarding my mineral rights were in my Title Policy Schedule B. So I pulled out my policy and reviewed that section (which is attached). There is no mention of anyone reserving the mineral interest, only the outstanding non-participating royalty interest - Section 9b, 9c, and 9d. I had the landman at my work look over the document and he said since the Title Company mentioned the royalty interest, if there were any reservations on the mineral rights, they would have been included also. So we are ASSUMING that we do in fact own our mineral rights. We will have to share in the percentage of royalty interest we receive. Unfortunately, the document does not state what percentage that James Jarvies and Mary Ray Hall reserved on November 29, 1951. So I will have to make another trip to the Courthouse to review the three Deeds. When I get the courage to make another trip, I will let you know the outcome. I have e-mailed Mark Rollins several times to confirm that we (as well as our adjoining neighborhoods) do own our mineral rights, but I have not received any information back from him. If you are part of another neighborhood (Villages of Parkwood Hill, Parkwood Hill Estates, Park Place, Parkway at Park Glen, and Basswood Park) and have confirmed whether or not you own your mineral rights, please let me know and I will pass on that information. I will continue to keep you posted on any new developments. Our database of people continues to grow. I believe when a legitimate oil and gas company comes knocking on our doors we will be ready.
Thanks,
Dawn Bowen
Gas Lease Update 1 – No gas committee meeting this week… too many people needed to be at the PID 6 Annual Meeting. 2 – Next gas committee meeting will be the following Thursday, Aug 14th, 7pm at the old Kroger office building, 5751 Kroger Drive. Seating is limited so please, only those who can contribute to the meeting should attend. We will have a huge general meeting soon. 3 – Name change – We have been advised by the city attorney that we can’t use PID 6 in our name. Would PID VI or PID Six work? We currently don’t know, but will run those by the attorney today. Please think of another name just in case he shuts us down. 4 – Hillwood meeting – next Monday, Aug 11. The property managers and I will sit down with Hillwood to see what they have to say about mineral rights. This is another good reason to push back our meeting this week. 5 – Mineral rights – getting stickier and stickier every day. This link is a question posed to the Allexperts website. Long story short… you may not have any mineral rights and even if you do, you may only have a small percentage, like 1/4 or a 1/8 ownership, due in large part to the many previous landowners and how mineral rights were handled. Example – if there were four land owners before you, and they all kept half as they sold their land, you may have as little as 1/32 of an interest in the mineral rights. A 1/4-acre lot at $20,000 an acre would net you approx $625, before you file and pay any fees to your mortgage company for the subrogation paperwork process, which could cost you $250 to $750. Every homeowner is different so without a lot of deed researching down at the courthouse, you really won’t know what you’re entitled to. It would be a mistake to assume that because you received an offer letter from Spartan, that you own your mineral rights. I am tending to believe that if we did own our mineral rights, companies like XTO and Chesapeake would have been at our doors a long time ago. Chesapeake won’t touch our area so that leads me to believe that there is something out there saying “Don’t Touch” Park Glen. Gas Lease Meeting Notes Please click here to see the meeting notes from the most recent gas lease meeting.
Additional Gas Lease
Information
The following link
has a lot of gas lease information that you may find helpful.
Town Hall Meeting and Links of Interest July 17, 2008
Recently, homeowners in Parkwood Hill Estates and Park Glen have received mailings from Spartan Geophysical concerning oil and mineral right leases. Based on how many inquiries your Board has been receiving and based on how many of you attended the Board meeting on the 10th, we know than many of you have been contacted. With this in mind, a town hall meeting will be held at the Alliance Baptist Church located at 8400 Park Vista Blvd, Fort Worth, Texas 76137 at 7:00 p.m. on Thursday July 24, 2008. If you are interested in attending the town hall meeting we encourage you to do so. The intention of this meeting is to gather questions and concerns. After this initial meeting, a committee will be established to look into our options. The person organizing this meeting is Jessica Whisenhunt, who is the Park Glen Neighborhood Association manager and she may be contacted at 682-286-1444 if you have questions.
Also, below are some links that you may have an interest in regarding the potential gas lease.
Star Telegram Barnett Shale BLOG (find out what other neighborhoods are doing)
Tarrant County - Property Search (used to find property acreage)
Land Conversion Calculator (calculate how much acreage you own)
Tarrant County - Warranty Deed Information (do a mineral rights search)
Gas Drilling 101 - The facts on drilling in your neighborhood
City of Fort Worth Gas Well Homepage
Texas Railroad Commission (regulates the industry)
Spartan Geophysical Q & A During July Board Meeting July 16, 2008
Q. Does Spartan have a drill site picked out? A. Yes, but this information has not been release to the public yet.
Q. Have you determined if we as residents own our mineral rights? A. Spartan has completed a surface ownership through public records at the Tarrant appraisal District to determine who the rightful owner of the land is, but we have not completed a mineral rights ownership investigation.
Q. How do you determine who owns the mineral rights? A. Once we have a signed letter of intent to lease your mineral rights, we will conduct a mineral rights investigation. If we determine that you do not own the mineral rights, we will share that information with you and won’t just tell you that you don’t own them.
Q. How close to an existing structure can you drill? A. In Tarrant County that distance is 300-600 feet.
Q. Has Spartan leased the mineral rights in other areas? A. Yes.
Q. How does the lease work? A. Like the offer states, we will lease your mineral rights for a period of three years with an option to lease for two more. You will receive a bonus of $13,000 per mineral acre and a royalty bonus of 25%. What that means is if your letter states you own .18 mineral acres, your bonus would be $13,000 * .18. The 25% royalty would be shared among all the residents in the affected area and you would receive an amount equal to your lot size.
Q. Will we get a check at the signing? A. We will give you a draft that you can take to the bank with an amount on it equal to your share according to your lot size. The bank will contact our bank that you wish to deposit it and once we have that contact, we will begin the mineral rights search. If we determine that you do own your mineral rights, we state you will have your funds within 45 “banking” days which equates to about 60 “calendar” days.
Q. Is this a lease of or a purchase of mineral rights? A. We are only interested in leasing your mineral rights.
Q. What happens if we get another offer from another company? A. You have every right to entertain any offer from any company. Just make sure that they have a drill site picked out and have applied for their permit with the City of Ft. Worth.
Q. What happens if not everyone signs the lease agreement? A. If we get a majority, we can still drill, we just can’t drill under a house that didn’t lease us their mineral rights.
Q. Can their mineral rights be pulled out even through they didn’t sign the lease? A. Think of it this way, if you have a helium filled balloon and you poke a hole in it, the gas is going to come out. It works the same way with a gas lease.
Q. How will the drilling be done? A. We use a technique called hydraulic fracturing, commonly referred to as “fracing”, which uses water and sand that is forced into a hole at a height rate of speed to break up the ground and cause fissures in the ground to allow the gas to escape.
Q. Can someone else own the minerals underneath my property? How can I tell if I own my minerals? A. Yes – It is possible that the mineral ownership may be different than surface ownership. A deed/title search may be necessary for one to determine who actually owns the minerals under a piece of property.
Q. Will drilling affect the
foundation of my house?
Q. Can a gas well be placed on my
property without my permission?
Q. Will someone be on the drilling
site at all times?
Q. Will the ground sink if stone and gas is removed? A. No. We don’t actually remove any stone, just gas.
Q. How far below the surface is the well typically? A. Between 6,000 and 8,000 feet.
Q. How far out can a well go? A. Typically, a horizontal well won’t go farther than 4,000 feet.
Gas Lease Inquiries July 5, 2008
Several people have contacted the Board after receiving a letter from Spartan Geophysical about purchasing your mineral lease. The Board will be contacting the company to invite them to meet with the homeowners to work out the best deal possible. Please refer back to our website for more details as they arise. |
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