SILT – — The Board of Trustees on Tuesday unanimously agreed to lease the town’s 75 acres of mineral rights to Antero Resources for four more years, until 2016.
The decision, made at the regular trustees meeting in Town Hall, established a lease rate of $400 per acre, which will bring $30,000 a year in revenue to the town. The May 29 edition of the Post Independent incorrectly reported that figure as $180,000 per year.
The deal was ratified despite objections voiced by one local resident, Peggy Tibbetts.
The lease revenue is significantly lower than the income the town got seven years ago, when it first leased 235 acres to Antero at a cost of $1,000 per acre.
The company is leasing only about a third of the acreage it leased from the town in 2005, because exploratory wells drilled north of town apparently have been deemed “uneconomical,” according to Antero officials.
Silt Trustee Rick Aluise said on Tuesday that the town agreed in 2005 to lease 235 “net mineral acres” to Antero. The lease rate at that time was $1,000 per acre, for a total of $235,000 per year in revenues paid to the town, Aluise said.
Read more at:
