As many of you know, there is a lot of drilling activity in Leon County, Texas, primarily due to the discovery of deep reserves of natural gas and the development of new technology to reach and extract it. Several topics and posts about individual wells are scattered throughout the Mineral Rights Forum. I have created this new topic to provide a consolidated place for anyone to post information or questions about drilling and well completion activity in Leon County. My role here is just to open the topic but not necessarily to have answers.
To start things off, does anyone know if drilling is finished for the Seaberg wells? If it is, is the rig next going to one of the new drilling pads west or southwest of those wells?
Spud date for the Seaberg OTA 1H was January 22, and it is now drilled but uncompleted. Spud date for the Seaberg ES 1H was February 18, and is currently being drilled.
If you know what survey(s) your property is in, you could use the Texas Railroad Commission’s public GIS viewer to see if there is any drilling activity in that part of Leon County.
Does anyone know of an economical method for determining the surface location of minerals acquired back in the 1940’s?
The deeds have the Abstracts and metes and bounds, but looking at the Central Appraisal District maps, much has changed over the years. Plotting the tracts using metes & bounds is possible, but extremely time consuming.
Do you or anyone else that reads this know about how long it is taking Comstock to drill a horizontal well? I’m sure it varies some due to the length of the tract.
They had to do some clearing, especially at the road to create a wider entrance that would accommodate the equipment and vehicles as 347 is heavily traveled by Sanderson Farms trucks.
Comstock rig Cactus 147 showed up on my pad near Oakwood October 27th last year to drill 2 opposing wells and as of March 26th Satellite image showed it still there so if it is still there today it would be 166 days. These were both 18000’ wells with 9400’ laterals. Hope that gives you an idea
This is the first time I’ve posted but I’ve followed for some time. I too have mineral rights in Leon County in an area where there is a lot of activity, including a producing natural gas well in the same survey and the neighboring survey (I think). I don’t know enough about mineral leases and how they are obtained and truly don’t understand why we haven’t been contacted. Leon County/Freestone County - Survey J.M. Sanchez. If there is activity, what do you suggest? Any information or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
I am just a mineral owner and no expert to any degree. Based on my experience, a good place to begin is to find and read the lease(s) for the wells on or near that survey. Even if the leases are decades old and the wells are now low producing or stripper wells, one of them could be holding your property, meaning it cannot be leased because it is already leased.
If you are getting paid on a well right now in your survey, then you may be held by production. Then you would not be contacted to lease again. You need to read your first lease or find it by contacting the operator or looking on www.TexasFile.com.
If you share the block, abstract name and number and the section number, we can help with the activity nearby.
Very good point, pstarkey. Finding land that is held by production (HBP) is something that has to be approached very carefully in the examination. It’s a huge no-no to “buy leases” (in landman lingo) on HBP minerals. I spent quite a bit of time working in the Jewett/Newby area from 2007 to 2015. There were some 60s vintage leases that were still producing, barely, but still holding large acreages, the McBride GU was one, which were holding land outside the unit because there were no Pugh clauses in those leases. Then there were the 1970s vintage wells drilled by Germany and other companies, some chasing deeper formations but later recompleted in the Travis Peak. But to your point, yes, there are some HBP situations where Comstock is working that has no production but is held by old leases. And, yes, I did see leases on interests that were HBP. And I’m sure that old McBride unit is still holding land outside the unit. That’s going to bite some young landman who doesn’t understand the concept.
