The Haynesville Shale story is still the big news around here. From south in DeSoto Parish to north Bossier and Blanchard, people are receiving offers to lease their mineral rights. I showed a couple from out of town a lovely house yesterday whose neighbors have been signing leases for about $6,000 per acre. This savvy seller had held off on leasing his rights since he was about to sell.
So that’s something to think about if you are about to put your house on the market and haven’t yet leased your rights – don’t. Lease your mineral rights that is. A house on the market with intact mineral rights that go along with the house is a valuable commodity these days. And it could easily sway a buyer who is torn between two similar homes. This house happens to be sitting on a little over an acre. That will be a nice little move-in bonus for whoever eventually buys it.
In trying to gather information to help organize my neighborhood to negotiate as a group rather than individually, I ran across an interesting term called “favored nations”. This is language you will want to make sure is included when you sign a contract leasing your mineral rights and setting up royalty payments. In laymen’s terms it means that if at any time the company pays a bonus or royalty percentage that is higher than your contracted amount (within a stated geographic boundary), they will pay you the difference between your contracted amount and the higher amount.
This clause does away with the anxiety that seems to be the prevailing emotion among landowners when discussing mineral rights. Everyone is concerned that they will not get the highest bonus payment or highest royalty percentage possible. You can rest assured that this language is not included in the standard contract the landman or energy company is asking everyone to sign. If anyone has a contract they would be willing to share that includes this language, I would love to see a copy of it.
