Look at the color coded Lease Map. Its coded to the intervals so can't exactly tell the leases themselves (doubtful that match exactly to colors but maybe). There is the relationship of acres being HBP and holding the lease itself.
Generally, leases let you hold more acreage than you need for optimal production and well spacing. e.g. some companies will drill 2 wells to hold your 640 acre lease, then come back in a year or so (when they've drilled all their obligatory wells so their leasehold won't expire) and drill an additional (lets say) 6 wells for optimal 80 acre spacing, or 2 more wells for 160 acre spacing.
TXRRC says 160 acres held by each vertical in this area. I believe this can be overridden in a lease (but why would mineral rights owner want too?)
Every outlined square is a section = 640 acres. Many have 4 dots - which would be vertical wells holding 160 acres each - thus 4 wells holds the section.
Look at say the orange piece in the middle - its 2 Qtr sections. 1 Hz well (1 mile lat) would hold that.
Go up a little - the green piece next to pink. A Hz across those 2 Qtr sections holds that.
Are pink pieces worth keeping?
In Irion county, possibly a 7,500 for lat holds the left side of green piece.
I'll leave you with this comment from CEO of Comstock resources from the earnings call
"somebody asked a question earlier, why didn't we drill a longer lateral? Well, the lease that we drilled on have only allowed us to drill that 3,600-foot lateral. It takes a lot of land work to unitize leases to allow you to drill longer lateral. So in 2013, I think we'll be doing that. As Mark said, you need to drill a 5,400-foot or 6,000-foot lateral to optimize the reason you drill a horizontal well. The other thing we did, if you remember, when we closed this December 2011, we had 600, 700, 800 leases. We have a ton of leases, and we kind of arranged them and said, "Well, we need to drill wells to hold leases." It wasn't really about geology; it's about holding leases."
This is complicated. If you want to look into it further suggest you begin by reading
Texas Administrative Code TITLE 16 - ECONOMIC REGULATION PART 1 - RAILROAD COMMISSION OF TEXAS CHAPTER 3 - OIL AND GAS DIVISION RULE §3.86 - Horizontal Drainhole Wells
GGP Price at posting:
0.8¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Held
