Neighborhoods that stick together get better leases
Many of you recently received gas lease offers from a new company, Two Rocks, and others of you have had land men knocking on your doors. Everyday new, unknown players are contacting our neighbors about signing gas leases. Be wary of leasing agents–remember they are salesmen who make money by delivering your signed leases to drilling companies.
Despite what you may be told, very few people in the neighborhood have signed leases. This is a negotiating ploy to get you to sign a lease. Please do not be in a hurry to sign a lease! THE GAS IS NOT GOING ANYWHERE. Wait for the dust to settle–you won’t be left behind.
Neighborhoods that work together as a coalition are getting the best deals. We think the economic terms of our leases can be increased from what is currently on the table. Other neighborhoods have been offered three times as was offered to us by Four Sevens and/or Dale over the summer. The original leases also do not address the location of drill sites, noise abatement, wastewater disposal, large trucks on our neighborhood streets, or mortgage subordination. A community lease could protect us from these possibilities.
The AHNA Gas Lease Committee is working very hard everyday on a community lease and an attorney is actively negotiating terms that are more favorable to the property owners and the neighborhood. Once the terms have been finalized and negotiated, the community lease will be mailed to all property owners within the boundaries of our neighborhood to be used on a voluntary basis.
The best thing we can do right now is stick together as a neighborhood and negotiate a more favorable community lease, just like Mistletoe Heights, Ryan Place and Berkeley neighborhoods did. It’s the only way that we’ll be able to be 100% certain that we don’t end up with drill sites in our neighborhood or large trucks traveling on our neighborhood streets.
Crestline Neighborhood Association and North Hi Mount Neighborhood Association have joined forces with us, doubling the number of acres that our attorney is representing. We’ve learned from the past experience of other neighborhoods that the more acreage you bring to the bargaining table, the more leverage you have.
Please encourage your neighbors to resist the signing frenzy and wait to sign once we’ve negotiated a community lease. If too many people sign individual leases, it will be impossible to negotiate more favorable terms. The long-term quality of life issues will be with us long after we’ve spent the bonus money. Sitting back and being patient has served us very well so far.
How long will the negotiating take? It could take a year, based on what other neighborhoods have experienced. Securing
the best possible lease takes time. From all that we’ve read, we’re doing all the right things. We appreciate your patience.
Arlington Heights Neighborhood Association has printed up a one page flier with information similar to this that is available for neighborhood-wide distribution. Volunteers are delivering them block by block. If you have them time to help, please let us know at christinapatoski@earthlink.net and we’ll get fliers to you.
E-mail is the only reasonable way to keep everyone informed. Sign up your neighbors to get on our neighborhood e-mail gas drilling list, by mailing their e-mail address to christinapatoski@earthlink.net. If your neighbor doesn’t have e-mail, please keep them updated on our progress. The Gas Lease Committee always presents a report at the monthly meetings of Arlington Heights Neighborhood Association (AHNA) which meets every third Monday of the month at 6:30pm at Arlington Heights United Methodist Church, 4200 Camp Bowie. AHNA recently designated a special committee made up of individuals who oppose gas drilling altogether or who have grave reservations about it. If you are interested in joining this group, please e-mail Christina.
By the way, knocking on doors, by landmen or any salesperson, is considered soliciting which is illegal in the city of Fort Worth, according to our Neighborhood Patrol Officer David Miller. If you get a land man knocking on your door, please report this activity to Officer Miller by calling him on his cell at 817/996-5506 or call the police non-emergency number at 817/335-4222. For the sake of safety, Officer Miller also advises that you do not answer your door if you don’t recognize the person knocking.
Disclaimer: This information is provided to you as an informational courtesy. Arlington Heights Neighborhood Association does not lease nor provide advice about leasing private property for gas exploration and drilling, nor do they endorse or are associated with any gas exploration or drilling companies.
Bonus and royalty amounts increasing
I wanted to give you all an update on the status of our gas lease negotiations. If you read the newspaper you already know that the bonuses and royalty amounts have increased dramatically since we were originally approached by Chesapeake.
Securing the best possible lease conditions and economic terms while protecting the neighborhood’s interests takes time, and I appreciate your patience. We’ve seen that neighborhoods that work together as a coalition are getting the best deals. Please see the attachments above and the links below that speak to this issue. Urban leasing is a new phenomenon and we are gathering information and approaching this very carefully to improve our position.
Here is where we are so far:
The lease and original offer Chesapeake sent to our neighborhood was not advantageous to landowners. Parnell McGlinchey, the attorney who is working on our revised lease representing more than 3,000 homeowners, recently met with Chesapeake and is negotiating the legal terms. He and the Gas Committee will negotiate the economic terms. If we don’t feel Chesapeake addresses our concerns and current market conditions, we will consider other options, including soliciting competition from other exploration companies.
Mr. McGlinchey is concurrently representing Crestline Neighborhood Association, North Hi Mount Neighborhood Association and West Byers Neighborhood Association (which are north of Camp Bowie from Merrick to Montgomery). He is negotiating a lease that will work for all four neighborhood associations which gives us all much more negotiating leverage–the bigger the group, the stronger bargaining position. This has clearly been demonstrated through the negotiations that Mistletoe Heights, Berkeley, and Ryan Place achieved by banding together and being patient. Patience may be required, as to date only Chesapeake is actively seeking leases in this area. Those neighborhoods received offers that are three times what Chesapeake has offered our neighborhood thus far, and the eye-popping numbers came only when two companies starting bidding against each other. With about 1,400 acres among the four neighborhoods, our combined size should make these neighborhoods attractive to other gas companies, and healthy competition should lead to a better deal for all four neighborhoods.
Please remember that you are free to sign the original lease you received, hire your own attorney and negotiate your own terms, or wait on the neighborhood lease. We think it is in everyone’s best interest to wait for the best possible deal, which the neighborhood working as a group can achieve. We have a dialogue with Chesapeake and hope to get favorable results soon. In the meantime, I appreciate your patience.
How long will the negotiating take? We still don’t know. There is more to the negotiations than the dollar amount. We will be in touch as soon as we have more information to pass along. The bottom line right now is that we are still in the negotiation state with Chesapeake.
If you have any comments, please send them my way and I’ll do my best to respond in a timely manner.
Christina Patoski
President
Arlington Heights Neighborhood Association
817/738-0330
http://www.fwbusinesspress.com/display.php?id=6667
http://www.star-telegram.com/business/story/281081.html
http://www.star-telegram.com/business/story/280035.html
http://www.star-telegram.com/business/story/278447.html
http://www.star-telegram.com/business/story/277149.html
http://www.star-telegram.com/business/story/273302.html
http://www.star-telegram.com/business/story/272845.html
http://www.star-telegram.com/business/story/258348.html
http://www.fwweekly.com/content.asp?article=6415
