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Other Long-Term Obligations and Commitments:
3 Months Ended
Mar. 31, 2016
Text Block [Abstract]  
Other Long-Term Obligations and Commitments:

(7) Other Long-Term Obligations and Commitments:

Operating Leases:

The Company has several non-cancelable operating leases, primarily for rental of office space, that have a term of more than one year. The future minimum lease payments for the rest of fiscal 2016 and thereafter for the operating leases are as follows:

 

(Thousands of dollars)    Operating
Leases
 

2016

   $ 597   

2017

     125   

2018

     16   
  

 

 

 

Total minimum payments

   $ 738   
  

 

 

 

Rent expense for office space for the three months ended March 31, 2016 and 2015 was $207,000 and $263,000, respectively.

Asset Retirement Obligation:

A reconciliation of the liability for plugging and abandonment costs for the three months ended March 31, 2016 is as follows:

 

(Thousands of dollars)       

Asset retirement obligation – December 31, 2015

   $ 11,737   

Liabilities incurred

     32   

Liabilities settled

     (77

Accretion expense

     124   
  

 

 

 

Asset retirement obligation – March 31, 2016

   $ 11,816   
  

 

 

 

The Company’s liability is determined using significant assumptions, including current estimates of plugging and abandonment costs, annual inflation of these costs, the productive life of wells and a risk-adjusted interest rate. Changes in any of these assumptions can result in significant revisions to the estimated asset retirement obligation. Revisions to the asset retirement obligation are recorded with an offsetting change to producing properties, resulting in prospective changes to depreciation, depletion and amortization expense and accretion of discount. Because of the subjectivity of assumptions and the relatively long life of most of the Company’s wells, the costs to ultimately retire the wells may vary significantly from previous estimates.