Request By:
Ms. Dora N. Henry, Clerk
Estill County Clerk's Office
Irvine, Kentucky 40336
Opinion
Opinion By: Steven L. Beshear, Attorney General; Elizabeth E. Blackford, Assistant Attorney General
You have written to ask what fee the County Clerk is to charge for recording cluster assignments of oil and gas leases. Pursuant to our conversation, you indicated that a cluster assignment is a single document which contains assignments of more than one lease.
As you noted, there is no special fee provision covering cluster assignments in KRS 64.012. However, KRS 64.012 does contain the following: "Miscellaneous recordings for which nospecific fee is set, provided the entirerecord thereof does not exceed three (3)pages$5.00Exceeding three (3) pages,each additional page$1.50"
Inasmuch as there is no specific fee set for cluster assignments, this provision governs the fee to be charged therefor.
Enclosed herewith you will find a copy of OAG 72-152. Though that opinion was written prior to the enactment of KRS 64.012, it contains information relevant to the recording of cluster assignments and the fee to be charged therefor. In particular, I direct your attention to that portion of the opinion which deals with the fact that the clerk must index each of the assignments contained in the instrument individually, but that there is to be no additional charge for this indexing. That discussion is relevant despite the enactment of KRS 64.012 because this statute, like its predecessor, has no provision for charges commensurate to the extra indexing duties that arise in cluster assignments.