Recent Posts

New Lease Bonus Web Widget and Facebook Application

In the recent weeks Agelio has increased our presence in the ever growing world of social networking. Many of you are already familiar with our FREE community site for mineral rights owners, MineralPlace.com, if not please stop by.   We also know that there are many options out there for connecting with your friends, family and even favorite companies. You can now follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/agelio or visit our facebook page. We even have a ...(Continued)



Dormant Minerals

Dormant mineral rights are the central focus of a new House bill in Texas (PDF).  Currently, 21 states have some form of a dormant minerals act.  I have included a spreadsheet that outlines them by state.  It was kindly provided to me by fellow NARO board member Linn Willers at Wachovia. There seems to be consensus that the intent of such acts is to encourage oil and gas production by making it easier to contact mineral ...(Continued)



Royalty and Mineral Rights Issues: A Q&A with Bill Sinclair

In lieu of a blog entry, I woud like to refer everyone to my interview with the Fort Worth Basin Oil and Gas Magazine. I was asked about a number of issues pertaining the mineral owners and I think you all will find the article very interesting.  As always I look forward to your feedback. Royalty and Mineral Rights Issues: A Q&A with Bill Sinclair (Continued)



Hello 2009?

The New Year is in full swing and while many U.S. citizens said goodbye and good riddance to 2008, I can’t help but wonder what 2009 has in store for mineral and royalty owners and the natural gas industry in general. Last year brought new fortunes of “Jed Clampett” proportions to mineral owners in the Haynesville Shale of Louisiana and parts of East Texas. Mineral owners in the Marcellus and Barnett Shales were also taking ...(Continued)



A peek into the past : No bailouts for the oil and gas industry

With the proposed bailouts for the American automobile industry making headlines, I can’t help but think about the times when the oil and gas industry faced similar dire straits. The 1980s oil glut was a surplus of crude oil caused by falling demand following the 1973 and 1979 energy crises. The world price of oil, which had peaked in 1979 at more than $35 per barrel, collapsed in 1986 from $27 to below $10. Tens ...(Continued)



Landmen Revealed

For most mineral owners, their first encounter with the oil and gas industry comes from a Landman seeking to lease the mineral rights. Generally, the attitude and initial lease offer sets the tone for the relationship between Landman and mineral owner. We think it’s important for mineral owners to share their experiences from the landmen they’ve encountered to promote those who do a fine job and to warn mineral owners of those who tend to ...(Continued)



Leases dwindling during economic crisis

The economic crisis we’re facing in the U.S. has seeped into the oil and gas industry. Lease offers are dwindling as well as the lease bonus dollars being offered for the few that are out there. The cause? Even though oil and gas companies are thriving amidst the new technology which allows them to drill in unconventional shale plays, these operators use credit rather than cash to conduct drilling operations. As many are realizing, it’s ...(Continued)



Lessons from the AAMO Conference

Last week Agelio Networks attended the American Association of Mineral Owners Conference in Houston. We were amazed at the hard work the city had put into repairing its town post hurricane Ike and enjoyed the most friendly service from local Houstonians. Bruce Vincent, president, secretary and director of Swift Energy Company, gave a concise and eye-opening presentation of the great myths that exist in the oil and gas industry. I thought I’d share these with you ...(Continued)



Thank you Little Rock

We just wrapped up the National Association of Royalty Owners (NARO) National Convention in Little Rock, Arkansas. We were excited to see some familiar faces and meet new NARO members from all different parts of the U.S.We’d like to thank everyone for supporting our product, MineralFile. We’ve listened to many stories from attendees who are in need of an accurate, reliable, cost-effective and easy to use management system for keeping track of their assets and ...(Continued)



New Mineral Owners Community

We’ve been tracking the many community sites available on the Web designed to help mineral owners make smart decisions about their mineral rights. We noticed some of these communities are limited to certain geographic areas and topics. We‘ve created a site for mineral owners across the U.S. Here members from any part of the country having any level of knowledge about the world of mineral ownership can discuss their issues and share news, information and ...(Continued)



Lease Bonus Graph

For some time I've wanted to collect and display leasing information for mineral owners.  Most of the sources I found were expensive or unreliable.  Instead we've decided to collect this information organically from mineral owners willing to share it.  If you have signed an oil and gas lease at some point, please help others in your community by entering it on our lease bonus page.  All the information is collected anonymously and is averaged by ...(Continued)



Leasing Your Minerals

I briefly touched on this topic in an earlier post, but I thought it might be time to explore the issue in more detail. I've been tracking a number of articles recently discussing the issue of leasing mineral rights.  As oil and gas prices rise companies are increasingly interested in "locking up" prospects in the regions they deem to be most valuable.What does this mean for you the mineral rights owner?Foremost it is important to ...(Continued)



MineralFile Referral Program

We know that many of you have told friends, family, neighbors and others about MineralFile.  We wanted to let those of you who have done so know that we appreciate your help in spreading the word about the application.  As such, we've decided to create a referral program to reward you for your time and effort.Staring today you can sign up for the program and begin receiving referral income every time one of your contacts ...(Continued)



Negotiating Oil and Gas Leases

Negotiating an oil and gas lease can be a an intricate and exhausting process.  Keep in mind this is a binding legal document that describes exactly how much of your mineral royalties you are entitled to in addition to provisions as to how they are recovered and how you are compensated for them.  If the operator drills one or more successful wells on your lease, the provisions of the document can be in place for ...(Continued)



MineralFile Open to the Public!

We are pleased to announce MineralFile is open to the public as of February 14th, 2008!We would like to thank all beta testers for their participation and for providing us with valuable feedback.  To everyone who did not have the opportunity to participate in the beta program, we apologize for not being able to accomodate you.  We hope you will sign-up for an account and continue to give us your feedback going forward.  We anticipate ...(Continued)



NAPE 2008

Bill will be at NAPE 2008 this week in Houston, Texas.  This is expected to be one of its biggest years ever.  We've heard rumors of over 15K attendees. Agelio will not have a booth, but feel free to contact us if you would like a demonstration of MineralFile or are interested in discussing mineral management. (Continued)



2007 NARO Convention

It was a pleasure to meet many of you at the 2007 NARO Convention.  We hope that you all continue to be as excited about MineralFile as we are to bring it to you. Many of you signed up for free trial accounts and I wanted to let you know we will be staggering account creation over the coming weeks.  When your account is created you will be notified by email.  We are in the ...(Continued)



Press Room Up and Running

Agelio's news Press Room area is up and runninng on our site.  We have separate sections for Agelio news and industry news.  Please check these pages often or subscibe to the news feeds on the bottom of each page.  If you would like us to include a link to your published news story, please contact us. (Continued)



Effective Royalty Rate

Negotiating the royalty rate and the lease bonus, while important, are not the only relevant financial elements in a mineral lease.  Many royalty owners are seeing deductions in their checks that were typically reserved for working interest owners.  The next version of MineralFile allows users to track these deductions over time and even compare them on a percentage basis to other royalty owners in the area.  In the meantime, I created a spreadsheet that recalculates ...(Continued)



MineralFile Community Forums

Agelio is proud to anounce the launch of our MineralFile Community!  We created this community with the goal of providing an open forum for discussion about MineralFile as well as issues in the royalty and mineral community at large.  Unlike other royalty and mineral discussion boards on the Internet, we intend to keep the MineralFile Community as open and democratic as possible.  We hope this brings a number of different perspectives to discussions.We encourage you ...(Continued)



MineralFile Private Beta Open!

We are pleased to announce that we are accepting entries into the MineralFile private beta program.  For those of you that are new to this type of program, you may be asking, what does this mean?  While we are completing the development and testing of MineralFile, we are inviting users to sign up to use the software for free for a limited time.  During the beta period all features are not yet available and some ...(Continued)



NARO-Texas Convention 2007

The convention is fastly approaching so be sure to register if you have not already done so.  We will attend the convention in Fort Worth on Thursday and Friday.  I'm particularly looking forward to attending the mineral management sections of the event.  Active management of one's minerals is important for all mineral owners.  These assets are as important as any other investment including real estate or stocks.  (Continued)