Acquisitions, Divestitures and Joint Agreements

Acquisitions, Divestitures and Joint Agreements covers the surface land side of buying and selling oil and gas assets. You will follow a deal from the notice that it is pending: decide whether it carries surface, review the surface files against the conveyance document, build the closing book and area map, check the vendor's draft assignment, and once the assignment is fully executed, notify landowners and third parties, transfer caveats and licences and update the file. You will convey a single well and its surface rights with a short-form conveyance, then find your way around a joint operating agreement built on the CALEP operating procedure and a PJVA facility agreement.

It is for surface land administrators and land agents who handle the surface files when their company buys or sells wells, pipelines and facilities. It is designed as continuing-competence learning for Alberta land agents, at an intermediate level rather than entry-level training.

What you will learn

• Decide from the conveyance document whether a deal has a surface component, and record a deal with no surface
• Review surface files against the conveyance, build the closing book and area map, and check a vendor's draft assignment against the map
• Carry out an assignment of surface rights: execution, notices to landowners and third parties, assignment of caveat, licence transfer and closing the vendor's file
• Explain what each part of a short-form wellbore and surface rights conveyance does, and why the licence transfer must be approved by the AER before the purchaser operates
• Find, in a joint operating agreement and a PJVA facility agreement, the working interests, the operator, the elections and the clauses on disposing of an interest, change of name and notices