I’ve told most of my clients that they will not get the same deal that any of my other clients did.  It just doesn’t work out that way.  I’ve started lease negotiations with the same landman from the same company in the same area at the exact same time and ended up with two rather different leases signed months apart from each other.  Different clients have different needs.

It looks like the State of West Virginia is running into something similar.  The State worked out and signed a lease with Statoil to drill under part of the Ohio river.  Before that deal was started, the State began working out a lease with Gastar to do the same thing under a different part of the river.  The Gastar deal still isn’t finished.