On October 1, 2019, the Company adopted authoritative guidance regarding lease accounting, which requires entities that lease the use of property, plant and equipment to recognize on the balance sheet the assets and liabilities for the rights and obligations created by all leases, including leases classified as operating leases. The Company implemented the new standard using the optional transition method and elected to apply the following practical expedients provided in the authoritative guidance:

1.For contracts that commenced prior to and existed as of October 1, 2019, a package of practical expedients to not reassess whether a contract is or contains a lease, lease classification, and initial direct costs under the new authoritative guidance;

2.An election not to apply the recognition requirements in the new authoritative guidance to short-term leases (a lease that at commencement date has a lease term of one year or less);

3.A practical expedient to not reassess certain land easements that existed prior to October 1, 2019 and were not previously accounted for as leases under the prior authoritative guidance; and

Upon adoption, the Company increased assets and liabilities on its Consolidated Balance Sheet by $19.7 million. The adoption did not result in a cumulative effect adjustment to earnings reinvested in the business or have a material impact on the Company’s Consolidated Statement of Income or Consolidated Statement of Cash Flows. Comparative periods, including disclosures relating to those periods, were not restated.

The Company primarily leases building space and drilling rigs, and on a limited basis compressor equipment and other miscellaneous assets. The Company determines if an arrangement is a lease at the inception of the arrangement. To the extent that an arrangement represents a lease, the Company classifies that lease as an operating or a finance lease in accordance with the authoritative guidance. As of September 30, 2020, the Company did not have any material finance leases. Aside from a sublease of office space at the Company’s corporate headquarters, the Company does not have any material arrangements where the Company is the lessor.

The Company enters into building and property rental agreements with third parties for office space, certain field locations and other properties used in the Company’s operations. Building and property leases include the Company’s corporate headquarters in Williamsville, New York, and Exploration and Production segment offices in Houston, Texas, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The primary non-cancelable terms of the Company’s building and property leases range from one month to ten years. Most building leases include one or more options to renew, generally at the Company’s sole discretion, with renewal terms that can extend the lease terms from one year to fourteen years. Renewal options are included in the lease term if they are reasonably certain to be exercised. The agreements do not contain any material restrictive covenants.

In March 2020, the Company entered into a lease agreement that commenced in November 2020. This lease agreement is a building and property lease for a term of ten years. Total estimated base rent payments over the lease term are approximately $8.4 million. There is also an option to extend the term of the lease for one additional period of eighteen months.

The Company enters into contracts for drilling rig services with third party contractors to support Seneca’s development activities in Pennsylvania and California. Seneca’s drilling rig arrangements are structured with a non-cancelable primary term of one year or less. Upon mutual agreement with the contractor, Seneca has the option to extend the contract with amended terms and conditions, including a renegotiated day rate fee.

The Company has strategically entered into shorter-term drilling rig arrangements to allow for operational and financial flexibility to respond to changes in its operating and economic environment. The Company uses discretion in choosing to extend or not extend drilling rig contracts on a rig by rig basis depending on market and operating conditions present at the time the contract expires, including prices for natural gas and oil and other performance indicators.

Due to these considerations, the Company concluded that it is not reasonably certain that it will elect to extend any of its drilling rig arrangements beyond their primary non-cancelable terms of one year or less. Consequently, the Company’s drilling rig leases are deemed to be short-term leases subject to the exemption for balance sheet recognition. These costs are capitalized as part of oil and natural gas properties on the Consolidated Balance Sheet when incurred.

The Company uses judgment when determining whether or not an arrangement is or contains a lease. A contract is or contains a lease if the contract conveys the right to use an explicitly or implicitly identified asset that is physically distinct and the Company has the right to control the use of the identified asset for a period of time. When determining right of control, the Company evaluates whether it directs the use of the asset and obtains substantially all of the economic benefits from the use of the asset.

The Company uses a discount rate to calculate the present value of lease payments in order to determine lease classification and measurement of the lease asset and liability. In the absence of a rate of interest that is readily determinable in the contract, the Company estimates the incremental borrowing rate (IBR) for each lease. The IBR reflects the rate of interest that the Company would pay on the lease commencement date to borrow an amount equal to the lease payments on a collateralized basis over a similar term in similar economic environments.

The Company’s subsidiaries enter into long-term arrangements to both reserve firm transportation capacity on third party pipelines and provide firm transportation and storage services to third party shippers. The Company’s firm capacity contracts with non-affiliated entities do not provide rights to use substantially all of the underlying pipeline or storage asset. As such, the Company has concluded that these arrangements are not leases under the authoritative guidance.

The new authoritative guidance does not apply to leases to explore for or use minerals, oil or natural gas resources, including the right to explore for those natural resources and rights to use the land in which those natural resources are contained. As such, the Company has concluded that its oil and gas exploration and production leases and gas storage leases are not leases under the authoritative guidance.

Operating lease costs, excluding those relating to short-term drilling rig leases that are capitalized as part of oil and natural gas properties under full cost pool accounting, are presented in Operations and Maintenance expense on the Consolidated Statement of Income. The following table summarizes the components of the Company’s total operating lease costs (in thousands):


	Year Ended September 30, 2020
Operating Lease Expense	$	4,129
Variable Lease Expense(1)	525
Short-Term Lease Expense(2)	918
Sublease Income	(297)
Total Lease Expense	$	5,275

Short-Term Lease Costs Recorded to Property, Plant and Equipment(3)	$	19,232

Right-of-use assets and lease liabilities are recognized at the commencement date of a leasing arrangement based on the present value of lease payments over the lease term. As of September 30, 2020, the weighted average remaining lease term was 7.4 years and the weighted average discount rate was 3.39%.

The Company’s right-of-use operating lease assets are reflected as Deferred Charges on the Consolidated Balance Sheet. The corresponding operating lease liabilities are reflected in Other Accruals and Current Liabilities (current) and Other Deferred Credits (noncurrent). Short-term leases that have a lease term of one year or less are not recorded on the Consolidated Balance Sheet.

For the year ended September 30, 2020, cash paid for lease liabilities, and reported in cash flows provided by operating activities on the Company’s Consolidated Statement of Cash Flows, was $5.3 million. During the year ended September 30, 2020, the Company did not record any right-of-use assets in exchange for new lease liabilities.

The following schedule of operating lease liability maturities summarizes the undiscounted lease payments owed by the Company to lessors pursuant to contractual agreements in effect as of September 30, 2020 (in thousands):


	At September 30, 2020
2021	$	4,968
2022	3,045
2023	2,507
2024	2,238
2025	2,086
Thereafter	7,631
Total Lease Payments	22,475
Less: Interest	(2,755)
Total Lease Liability	$	19,720

The future minimum operating lease payments as of September 30, 2019, as reported in the Company's 2019 Form 10-K, under the prior authoritative guidance are as follows (in thousands):

(1)The future minimum operating lease payment amount for 2020 includes short-term leases, including drilling rigs, that are not included in the schedule of operating lease liability maturities above under the new authoritative guidance.