This is my first post on this forum and I have a question. Maybe someone out there has an answer.
My father and his brothers and sisters inherited a large parcel of property in 1954 and in 1976 a large oil company paid the family $90,000.00 to drill an exploratory well on the property. Oil was found, but it was apparently quite deep. The oil company, I believe it was Chevron, said that until the price of oil went over $30.00 a barrel, it wouldn't be worth the investment of pumping the oil. Nothing was done after 1976 and apparently my dad and his siblings forgot about it.
My dad and his brothers and sisters have all passed away and we, my cousins and I, can't locate any record of drilling the exploratory well. I know it was done and I vividly recall that my dad received a check for his portion of the $90,000.00, but we can't find any documentation. I've been through my dad's paperwork and my cousins have been through their parents things but none of us can find any record of the drilling. We, the heirs, own the mineral rights.
Is there a way to obtain some kind of record of the drilling on our property? Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Thanks for your input.
Yes there is. Every State requires some sort of reporting be made on every well drilled. Depending on what State you are in, it may even be available online. If you can give me more information, I might be able to point you in the right direction.
Having said that, I have heard this same story over and over and over...
The truth is, things are never that simple.
Scott:
If your mineral area is located in Utah, you can google the following: oilgas.ogm.utah.gov This is website to the Utah Oil and Gas Commission. Their website will most likely contain the information on this well. In order to properly navigate their website, I would contact them at 801-538-5283. Provide them with as much info as possible and they should be able to help you.
Steve,
The property is in Summit County, Utah. If there's information online, that would be great! I wondered if a state agency or division might keep these kinds of records. I also wondered about federal agencies. I'm guessing it won't be easy to find the information. This was back in the old - pre-computer times and the record might never have been digitized. I have a cousin who is hoping we've hit the jackpot, but I'm very skeptical until we find definitive records.
Thanks for your help.
Scott Stevens
Steve Durrett said:
Yes there is. Every State requires some sort of reporting be made on every well drilled. Depending on what State you are in, it may even be available online. If you can give me more information, I might be able to point you in the right direction.
Having said that, I have heard this same story over and over and over...
The truth is, things are never that simple.
Scott:
There were 15 wells drilled in Summit County during 1976. Five of them were non-productive. There were none drilled by Chevron. There was one drilled by Amoco but that's the only Major in the bunch. Perhaps that's who you are thinking of? The Amoco well was drilled in a very remote location just about 4 miles SW from the Wyoming corner. If you had some general idea of the location I could verify it for you and print out the well report.
Remember, $30 in 1976 would be about $120 in today's dollars.
Steve,
The property is located just a couple of miles east of Oakley, Utah on the north bench of the Kamas Valley. It's not far from the Weber River. I thought I heard it was Chevron, but I guess the story's details have gotten confused through the years.
Thanks for your help!
Scott
Based on that description, the best match is the Champlin 495 that was actually drilled in 1977. It is about 8 miles up the Kamas valley east of Oakley and about 3 miles north of the road. There were actually two wells drilled within a couple of miles of each other, both by Amoco, both in 1977 and both dry holes. Assuming one of these wells is the one you are thinking of, you are at the southern end of, and just off of, the Overthrust Belt, a very complex geological setting. This area was hot back in the 1970's after the discovery of the Anschutz Ranch field. The nearest production is about 5 miles north of here in the Lodgepole Field, but it produces from geologic formations that are not present at your location. The two wells in question did not encounter any oil shows worth testing.
The API Numbers for these two wells are 43-043-30064 and 43-043-30065 if you want to get a copy of the reports from the Utah Oil and Gas Commission website, but I've looked them over and there really isn't anything encouraging in them.
Realistically speaking, there isn't much you can do with this. I suppose you could hire a geologist and have him work up a prospect idea and try to market it for you, but honestly there are already thousands of Companies employing tens of thousands of geologists currently scouring the country looking for any idea they can find. And if they like it they will find you.
Sorry, I couldn't be more encouraging. Good luck with it.
Thanks, Steve
It looks like the state of Utah doesn't have any information on the drilling that took place. I would assume that means that unless someone in the family can come up with some kind of documentation, we're just out of luck.
Thanks for your help on this!
Scott
Is it possible that the state of Utah wouldn't have a record of drilling?
Scott Stevens said:
Thanks, Steve
It looks like the state of Utah doesn't have any information on the drilling that took place. I would assume that means that unless someone in the family can come up with some kind of documentation, we're just out of luck.
Thanks for your help on this!
Scott
There is a file on both wells on the Commission website. Could you not find them?
I went to this page: http://oilgas.ogm.utah.gov/Data_Center/LiveData_Search/well_data_lookup.cfm and I copied and pasted the well numbers, but nothing came up.
Was I looking at the wrong page?
Steve Durrett said:
There is a file on both wells on the Commission website. Could you not find them?
It's a little buggy. Not sure why, but I had to put in the number without any dashes and select "Like" instead of "Equals"
That should bring it up. There are also well logs you can look at in the Well Logs section, although they will probably just look like nonsense if you're not familiar with them.
OK, it worked! It looks like these sites are quite a distance from our property. After looking at the interactive Utah Oil and Gas map, the closest producing wells are about 8 miles directly north. It also looks like Amoco drilled a couple of exploratory wells between the Lodgepole field and our property.
Interesting information!
Is it possible that the state of Utah wouldn't know about an exploratory well?
Steve Durrett said:
It's a little buggy. Not sure why, but I had to put in the number without any dashes and select "Like" instead of "Equals"
That should bring it up. There are also well logs you can look at in the Well Logs section, although they will probably just look like nonsense if you're not familiar with them.
No way, no how. Every well has to be surveyed, permitted, inspected and reported on extensively. Maybe 100 years ago, the regulatory system hadn't yet been developed, but in the 1970's? Absolutely, positively, no questions asked, cross my heart and hope to die - there will be a record. If you have a legal description of your property, or even if you can find it on Google Earth that could help to determine which well you are looking for. Both of the wells I pointed to can be seen on Google Earth. My guess is there is some fuzzy memory at work somewhere.
Thanks Steve. I really appreciate your help. We'll have to look for our pot of gold somewhere else.
Thanks again!
Scott
Steve Durrett said:
No way, no how. Every well has to be surveyed, permitted, inspected and reported on extensively. Maybe 100 years ago, the regulatory system hadn't yet been developed, but in the 1970's? Absolutely, positively, no questions asked, cross my heart and hope to die - there will be a record. If you have a legal description of your property, or even if you can find it on Google Earth that could help to determine which well you are looking for. Both of the wells I pointed to can be seen on Google Earth. My guess is there is some fuzzy memory at work somewhere.
Not sure I'm doing this right. But if you have SSN's of your folks you might learn something from their income tax forms..if they kept them. Also, you might visit the Courthouse for the county your property is in. The abstract office should have records that might help you. You might go to the online census for the year following the suspected transaction and view the info there. Those records show the initial census as it was taken, and we were able to find the nearby neighbors. Fortunately some descendents were able to help us in our case. Gotta put on your detective cap and keep at it..pray..God really helped us in making the right connections.
Scott Stevens said:
Thanks Steve. I really appreciate your help. We'll have to look for our pot of gold somewhere else.
Thanks again!
Scott
Steve Durrett said:
No way, no how. Every well has to be surveyed, permitted, inspected and reported on extensively. Maybe 100 years ago, the regulatory system hadn't yet been developed, but in the 1970's? Absolutely, positively, no questions asked, cross my heart and hope to die - there will be a record. If you have a legal description of your property, or even if you can find it on Google Earth that could help to determine which well you are looking for. Both of the wells I pointed to can be seen on Google Earth. My guess is there is some fuzzy memory at work somewhere.
I have the same situation too! Our land is in Amite County in Mississippi, do you know where I would go to find out if there was anything found when they drilled? We lived in Canada when Shell and Exxon contacted us, they said the oil was too deep.
Thank you so much,
Adele Ambler
Steve Durrett said:
Yes there is. Every State requires some sort of reporting be made on every well drilled. Depending on what State you are in, it may even be available online. If you can give me more information, I might be able to point you in the right direction.
Having said that, I have heard this same story over and over and over...
The truth is, things are never that simple.
http://gis.ogb.state.ms.us/MSOGBOnline/
The link above will take you to the State Board website for Mississippi. From there you can search using location, dates, Company name, etc
Good luck,
I've discovered that Chevron paid our family $90,000.00 in 1976 to do a field study of some kind. No wells were drilled and no one in the family kept a copy of the report, if one was provided. I'm thinking of contacting Chevron to see if they have any information on what was done.
One uncle, who is known to exaggerate, said the family was told there were "billions" of barrels of oil under the ground, but it was very deep and too expensive to recover unless oil prices went up substantially.
Would Chevron be willing to look up this kind of info.?