Surface Lease from a bankrupt oil company

[Ronski]

Had coffee with some friends this morning and one of the older fellows mentioned his lease payments were late this year. He said the lease is up the end of March so he figured it would come with a renewal offer at the end of the month. I did a quick google of the company "W***** Energy" and the court appointed a receiver in August 2015, it's not a huge loss to him (not that he has money to throw away but he's doing okay) but how about younger guys who bought land with the lease payment a factor in the land payment?
I'm sure this is just the start and there's going to be a lot more in next year. Anyone have experience with this?

Thanks

EDIT: I tried to change the title wording but can't. I don't know if they are bankrupt just that the court appointed a receiver to control day to day in August. Also don't want the company name there in case I"m misunderstanding the meaning of receiver.

[boarderbloke]

In SESK the trend has changed over the last 5 yrs or so. A land buyer used to pay 3 yrs lease payments at the time of purchase, then you, the land buyer would receive your payments from the oil companies. Then 5 yr lease payments were negotiated, then it went to 7 yrs then for some horny land buyers even 10 yrs. Once it hit 7 yrs, land buyers started offering a different arrangement, where the seller would receive the payments from the oil company and the land buyer would farm around the leases without payment for the negotiated period. So for the new buyer, they didn't have to come up with money for leases, and didn't have to occur the risk of loosing the lease before the length of time they'd already paid up for. If the abandoned and cleaned up a lease, so be it. You didn't pay for it and now you don't have to work around it. Once the length of term is up(5yrs, 7yrs, 10yrs) then the new land owner starts receiving the lease payments.

[tubs]

had that happen to me years ago the receiver paid the lease then

[ajl]

In AB the surface lease board can make the provincial government pay the lease if the oil company is bankrupt. This is not a completely seamless process though. Section 36 in the surface rights act I believe deals with the procedure.

[BFW]

We got 5 sites not paid on this year. Went to the office in Calgary. CFO was there as well as the receiver. Said " sorry we have no money." Going to be a big problem in areas with lots of small oil and gas producers. Fortunately we are mostly EnCana but even they are wanting out of some agreements.