Landowners who have had numerous oil & gas companies ducking away from their rental payment contracts got a little bit of help in Cayley Wednesday night on how to get the funds that are rightfully owed to them.

Members of the Surface Rights Board, Alberta Energy Regulators, Livingstone-Macleod MLA Pat Stier and members of the My Landman Group Inc. were on hand to take questions and give guidance to those looking to collect.

Vice-president of My Landman Group Inc. Darryl Bennett says landowners, for the time being, have to apply for rent owed to them through Section 36 of the Surface Rights Board.

"It's very important to make these applications before they have to apply for bankruptcy or go into bankruptcy protection because there are then some restrictions," he says. "There will be a short window of time where you can't make the applications, later on you can, but you might as well be ahead of the gam and be proactive instead of reactive."

The current owners of the abandoned or orphaned wells is Lexin, who bought the wells from MFC, which used to be Compton Petroleum's territory before being bought out in 2012.

Lexin is based out of Hong Kong, which has made things even more difficult for landowners to receive payments or even information, but Bennett says getting help from the Surface Rights Board can avoid calls to Hong Kong completely.

"If it's a site that there's nothing above the ground where maybe the compensation is too high they will assess that. But for anything where there's existing infrastructure on the ground where they haven't been paid within a year or two that's a fairly fast tracked process and I would hope it would be done within the year, some are faster than that but within the year you should get it but you're going to have to apply every year as well."

Whether it's a producing, non-producing or non function well, Bennett says they can help those with unpaid rental agreements get the money that is owed to them.

"They might make errors on them, they're unsure of the process so we do this with hundreds of landowners and we're very familiar , it's efficient,  we have all the document and people that can sign the statutory declaration, commissioner of oath. So we just streamline it, guide through and do it for them and they're costs are actually paid for us doing that as well."

Some owners haven't seen payment for almost two years. Bennett says in time he hopes that applications for payments will no longer have to be done annually and that process can be sped up so landowners aren't left behind.

Some landowners have taken the liberty of locking gates that have access to the wells in order to get payment but members of the Surface Rights Board, Alberta Energy Regulators and My Landman Group Inc. says it's best to take the locks off because if something were to happen to that well site with a lock on it. Landowners become liable for damages.

For more on the Surface Rights Board click here and for more information on how My Landman Group Inc. can help in your application click here.

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