Oil and gas leasing activity is still going on at a rapid pace and I continue to be amazed, sometimes appalled, at the variety of lease forms I’m seeing. It seems like every landman and every oil company has their own customized lease form. Some are more faithful to the “tried and true” standard provisions we’ve seen for decades; some can only be described as “imaginative”.

I recently came across some articles that might be of interest to landowners who’ve been approached about signing leases on their land, and thought I’d pass them along: Oil & Gas Leasing: Top 10 Things To Do, Oil & Gas Leases: 10 Common Mistakes During Mineral Lease Negotiation and Oil & Gas Production 101 for an introduction to what’s involved in drilling and producing. Each of the pages those links go to contain more links a person can follow in the process of becoming knowledgeable about the subject. As they say, knowledge is power, and it’s especially important when it comes to letting strangers use your land.