Surface lease question

[grassfarmer]

sixteen years ago we received $13,500 right of entry and first year surface rental for a 7 acre lease site, including lease road which was fenced with new four strand fence and steel gates on both sides of the lease road to access land on the other side as well as steel gates and a texas gate at the entry off the county road.

Annual rent is $3500.

[silverback]

They started paying $250 per acre as production loss per year, then they also tack on inconvienience and things like that. Most cbm wells were first worth about 2400 per year, on a 3.5 acre site that works out to about $685 per acre. I assume that is what was meant by $700 per acre rental?

[cowman]

Actually farmers son is right. The company has pretty well a set price for a lease and they'll juggle the numbers however you like...but the bottom line is it comes out the same! You really aren't going to get much more than your neighbor does.
The most important thing is to know what the neighbor is getting? And also the next guy down the road?
So how do you do that? Farmers are about the dumbest guys around when it comes to sharing information...don't like to let the neighbors know their finances, sort of thing!
Well a good way of finding out prices is join your local surface rights group, if you have one. The $50 membership is well worth the information you will recieve? Get out to the meetings and learn the latest news. And help others by sharing your information! What goes around, comes around.

[cowman]

Many municipalities have surface leases on municipally owned land, and those leases are public information. In our municipality for years the individual negotiating the leases had no expertise in doing so, and the lease rent was a mere pittance of what it should have been. A committee was formed to negotiate new leases and re-negotiate the older ones, then the information was made available for county residents to use in their own negotiations. The oil companies didn't like it much but they had to pay the piper !