Chesapeake is revising leases with "if you don't agree..".

By DANIEL GILBERT

Chesapeake Energy Corp. CHK +0.10%is pushing Ohio landowners to accept revised lease contracts that would help the cash-strapped driller save money while holding on to its prized oil and gas fields.

The company's actions, documented in scores of property and court records, aren't the first time that Chesapeake has tried to change the terms of lease deals, or walked away from them. Since 2008, more than 100 lawsuits have been filed across the country by landowners, who claim the company breached contracts. In some cases, settlements have been reached, in other cases the litigation continues.

Ohio Department of Natural Resources

Ohio Department of Natural Resources

The company doesn't dispute that it has sought to renegotiate leases in Ohio. In cases in other states where Chesapeake has walked away from deals, it contends that it had the contractual right to do so.

Chesapeake, the country's second-largest natural-gas producer, has spent about $2 billion to lease the mineral rights to more than a million acres—about 5% of Ohio's land mass—in a bet that Ohio's Utica Shale fields will become a major oil producer. The leases contain deadlines by which the company must drill wells costing millions of dollars apiece or give up rights to the property.

Facing a cash crunch and mounting pressure from activist shareholders to trim spending, Chesapeake is seeking contract changes that would allow it to drill fewer wells while keeping the leases. It is generally required to drill at least one well on a specified group of properties known as a unit; it is trying to bundle leases into much bigger units, which will allow it to drill fewer wells but retain rights to more acreage.


The bigger units mean that each landowner's stake of any oil or gas produced is smaller, but they could potentially share in production from more wells.

Chesapeake's agents tell landowners that they will be shut out of the oil and gas boom if they don't agree to the changes, according to landowners interviewed by The Wall Street Journal, which reviewed more than 100 property records in Ohio filed over the past year detailing the changes.