A landman is an agent that represents oil & gas companies in negotiations with landowners: their job is to get the best terms for the company. This interaction is perhaps one of the most important elements of the oil and gas exploration and extraction process.
Though many landmen sign onto and abide by codes of ethics, some landowners have accounts of landman dishonesty and misbehavior. Landowners are particularly vulnerable to misinformation at this moment as it is often the first time that they make contact with the oil and gas industry. The Landman Report Card was started to assist landowners in this tricky process by allowing landowners to educate and assist each other.
This site provides tools to learn about landmen and their companies through reading reviews submitted by users. It also allows users to submit their own report cards, contact other users and use the site as their own private diary of interactions with this industry.
The Landman Report Card is produced by the ExtrAct group at MIT in collaboration with citizens' alliances in Colorado, New Mexico, Ohio and West Virginia as well as the Oil and Gas Accountability Project. ExtrACT is funded by MIT's Center for Future Civic Media, a research group dedicated to developing novel web-based technologies for citizen journalism.
To get in touch with the ExtrAct team, email us at extract@media.mit.edu.