Leasing

Our firm  specializes in Oil and Gas Leasing, both exploration and Storage development.  We also have experience in Solar and Wind Power leasing.  We have 35 years of experience in Ontario.  We also have skills in pipeline right of ways, easements, damage settlements, 2D and 3D seismic permitting and title searching with curing.  We are also actively involved in pipeline GPS location and mapping.   On behalf of the pipeline companies we maintain customer relations and database updating.

Our Landmen negotiate land acquisition leases with farm landowners in Huron, Middlesex, Lambton, Kent, Elgin, Oxford  and Essex Counties every day on behalf of oil and gas exploration companies operating in Southwestern Ontario.  That is not our geographical limit, we will go anywhere to lease property.

Leasing is a partnership between three principles, the leasing company, the exploration company and the landowner.  Treat each principle with respect and honesty and your negotiations will proceed in an orderly manner to a successful conclusion.  Give all of the information necessary to all parties in the negotiation to allow everyone to make an educated decision.    The skill is to provide each side with a feeling that they are happy with the negotiations, to negotiate an equitable solution.  We are extremely good at maintaining good relationships with our landowners while achieving the aims of the exploration company.  This is a win win situation.

We are careful to provide our clients with accurate documents.  Our office prepares all documents in our office with information from the Land Titles  documents.  The completed documents are checked by our Lease Administrator prior to presentation to the landowner for signing.  This helps prevent errors in the field.

Our landmen submit detailed written database reports about each and every contact they have with the landowner.  We include this information with our invoices.  At a moments notice we can give you a fully detailed report of the current status of negotiations with each and every landowner.  If you need to know anything about a file we can generate a report  at a moments notice for any work in our system.  We can tell you what is going on in any project at any time.

Our clients appreciate reading in our invoices exactly what we have accomplished on their behalf in the field.  We detail every contact on every day in our support documentation attached to the invoice.  Our clients are completely aware of how they are spending their money.  Our charges are fair, low by industry standards, because we keep our overhead down.  We have 35 years of leasing experience yet we have always charged less than our competitors and our clients keep coming back project after project.

Leasing land has been our life’s work and it has been our privilege to serve the oil, gas, and pipeline  industry for over 35 years.  Large projects are not a concern.  At one time in the late nineties we acquired over 250,000 acres in one year.  We can gear up for large projects such as our 23,000 acre 3D seismic program or we can assign small projects.  All projects are given the same amount of attention to detail.  We appreciate all work.

Seismic

Our firm specializes in Oil and Gas Leasing but lately we have become experts in Seismic Project Management.  We have been very fortunate to have run very large seismic projects in the last three years.  We have gained invaluable experience in both 2D and 3D projects.

In our last 35 years we have been fortunate enough to have been entrusted by exploration firms to run a lot of vibroseis and dynamite projects.  We were involved with the very first heli assisted 3D shoot dynamite shoot in Ontario.  It was a 23,000 acre project with 181 landowners involved.  We settled all 181 damage settlements without incident.  We have run projects just along municipal roads as well as cross country lines.  We have a good working knowledge of who we need to obtain permits from for road crossings and highway shooting which is extremely difficult.

Winter seismic projects are not a problem when the ground is frozen hard.  Summer programs involve a sensitive touch with the landowner as he watches his crops fall under the vehicles.  We have an excellent Western Canadian style professional seismic permit that has been approved by the Seismic companies that we work with.  We provide binders with copies of all permits to the survey crew, the seismic shooting crew and the exploration company prior to the commencement of shaking.

 We provide weekly shape files or PDF’s from Autocad that show clearly where we have picked up seismic permits along the proposed path.  We update the exploration company and project manager weekly or daily if required with the progress of the project on a parcel by parcel basis in both map and spreadsheet format.

Our landmen submit detailed written database reports about each and every contact they have with the landowner.  We include this information with our invoices.  At a moments notice we can give you a fully detailed report of the current status of negotiations with each and every landowner.  If you need to know anything about a file we can generate a report  at a moments notice for any work in our system.  We can tell you what is going on in any project at any time.

We have been so fortunate to have been involved in these projects and in all 35 years we have never had a single  landowner take us to any arbitration hearing or court house.  We  have been successful in 100 percent of our damage negotiations on seismic lines.

Drilling

Drilling a well is a many faceted project.  We handle it all for you, all but the drilling!  The exploration company picks the location and completes their application to the Ministry of Natural Resources and we do the rest.  We have set up many well sites.

Once a location is picked for drilling we conduct title searches and map the area to prove absolute ownership.  We pass the title searches onto legal for curing the title.  Our lawyer and title searcher have over 60 years of experience in this type of searching and curing.

We then obtain an agreement with the landowner called a Wellsite Access Permit which details all the terms of agreement including well pad size, roadway locations, location of drainage tiles and type and value of crops for compensation purposes.

We arrange for a surveyor to map out the proposed location so that the landowner and the exploration company are absolutely clear as to their area of operations.  The map is also included with the application to the ministry.

If the well is successful we have a number of decisions that must be negotiated between the landowner and the exploration company.  It is so important that a good rapore is established by the agent up front so that future negotiations can be conducted with respect for each stakeholders position.  This is where a good landman’s effect is obvious.  If the landman has done a good job up to this point, lived up to his word and has been honest and fair with the landowner then pipeline, meter site locations etc. can be easily concluded.

We manage all facets of the program right down to settling the final damages and registering all documents and in some cases hand delivering the first royalty check to the slightly richer landowners.