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Other Long-Term Obligations and Commitments
3 Months Ended
Mar. 31, 2017
Debt Disclosure [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 2017 and thereafter for the operating leases are as follows:

 

(Thousands of dollars)    Operating
Leases
 

2017

   $ 597  

2018

     59  
  

 

 

 

Total minimum payments

   $ 656  
  

 

 

 

Rent expense for office space for the three months ended March 31, 2017 and 2016 was $181,000 and $207,000, respectively.

Asset Retirement Obligation:

A reconciliation of the liability for plugging and abandonment costs for the three months ended March 31, 2017 is as follows:

 

(Thousands of dollars)       

Asset retirement obligation – December 31, 2016

   $ 17,505  

Liabilities incurred

     30  

Liabilities settled

     (99

Accretion expense

     192  
  

 

 

 

Asset retirement obligation – March 31, 2017

   $ 17,628  
  

 

 

 

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.