Don’t take the bait!

In the coming days expect to see a flurry of offers from land brokers trying to get you to sign a gas lease for your mineral rights….as an individual.  You’ll find big envelopes in your mailbox, flyers on your door with offers and even phone calls and voicemails trying to sway you into signing away your mineral rights.

Don’t do it!  The offer will likely be below what other nearby neighborhood alliances have received recently.  Those other neighborhood groups were able to negotiate much higher amounts and better lease terms because the residents were committed to sticking together and negotiating as a group.  There is strength in numbers.

We are asking our group members to hold steady and not sign the lease papers that they receive in the mail.  By signing now, the gas companies are dictating the terms and amounts.  We have a great negotiating team in place that is knowledgeable and highly committed to bargaining for the best possible lease for all of our great group of members. Additionally, we are also homeowners and have a vested interest in seeing all of our neighbors succeed with a great gas lease.

Don’t just settle for the arbitrary amount that the gas companies feel they can get away with.  After all, when they started making offers they thought our mineral rights were worth much less than they seem to think they are worth now.  Now that they know we have a strong group, they would like nothing better than to get our members to sign for less than what they know they’ll have to offer in the end.  By standing firm with us, our group members are reinforcing the signal to the land brokers and energy companies that they will have to come to the negotiating table ready with offers that are equal to or better that what we are seeing around our vicinity.

Negotiation Committee meets and begins to craft contract

A broadcast email went out from Bob Haelle yesterday advising all of our members about the Negotiation Committee’s first meeting held on Thursday, December 13, 2007. The email read as follows:

The negotiation committee held their first meeting yesterday, Thursday. We met to discuss the lease we intend to submit during negotiations. We put our general terms in place and are working toward further details. Once we have it all put together, we will present the lease to our attorneys for their review.

Please keep in mind, it took other neighborhood groups more than 4 months to get this far. We have come a long way in just two months. The key now is to be patient. It is very tempting to take offers that may be presented to you, but the lease is more important than the sign on bonus. We are attempting to put clauses in our lease that will best benefit us all. Once you read the final draft, I am certain you will be happy you held back and stayed with the Neighborhood Group.

In addition, few of us planned on getting any money regarding the Barnett Shale and if you get a lump sum of cash just before the end of the year, it could very easily place you into the next higher tax bracket. If that happens, you’ll end up paying a lot more to Uncle Sam in the year 2007 and your bonus money could possibly be cut in half.

Again I ask, please be patient. We are working hard for you.

Bob Haelle

If you are a member of Neighborhood Group and did not receive the above email it is possible that we don’t have your email address on file or that the address may have been inadvertently entered incorrectly. If so, please send us an email at bobhaelle@gmail.com and we’ll check it and get it corrected.