I signed a lease for a 70 acre tract of land, of which me and my brother own 25 acres in mineral rights. I don’t know who owns the other 45, can this be found out?Will that 70 acre tract be pooled into a bigger group? I have read that they usually do 640 sections, if I understand correctly.
Maybe more to my point, if I was not pooled, would that mean that our percent of royalties would be equivalent to someone who had leased roughly 175 acres as a part of a 640 acre tract? I apologize for an ignorant question, I am as new to this as you could possibly be.
First of all;;Most spacing units are now 1280 acres for Bakken Horizontel wells(2 sections). The only way you could find out who else owns is go to your county recorder office and do a lot of searching. It doesn't really matter! If it is not a relative or friend it could have been resold many times; so wait for a well to be dug and keep track of where other wells are and how they are producing if you need to renegotiate your lease in a couple of years!!!
I'm assuming that you are asking in reference to minerals in Oklahoma by your reference to 640-acre sections, so I will answer accordingly. However, Oklahoma may not be the only state with 640-acre sections, so my assumption may be incorrect. All ownership is a matter of public record available in the county clerk's office in the county where the minerals are located. You can hire an independent landman to perform title search if you're interested in learning the identities of the other owners in your section. However, they normally charge several hundred dollars a day to do this work, so you normally would have to have some reason for wanting this information other than just being curious. Those leasing and producing minerals assemble this ownership information for their own purposes and do not freely share the information in most cases. You are correct, your section will likely be developed as one 640-acre unit.
Thank you! After reading more I realized the term I meant was production unit, and yes, Carter County, OK. I didn’t know how that works, does that mean they would wait to drill in an area untill they get the other leases signed to make up the whole unit?
Joe, It really depends on whether the leasing is for a specific drilling project or if the lessee is just speculating on future development. Sometimes Land Brokers acquire mineral properties in hopes they can reassign them at a profit. If an operator is planning a well in the near future they could be leasing while the legal matters are in process with the Oklahoma Corporation Commission. If you would like to post the legal description of your mineral acreage I can look it up on the OCC website. I need section, township and range.
Thank You!! Sec 26 twn 4s r2e
Joe, Nothing on the OCC yet. You are leased with Oil Valley right? R.D Williams has been taking leases on that section and some if not all are being assigned to XTO. Could be that XTO will be the operator if they drill.
Yeah, oil valley. I really appreciate the information!
So in other words, probably don’t expect them to anything soon?
Probably not, but the fact that they are leasing is a good sign. The drilling operators have to go through several steps with the OCC before they can get a drilling permit. So once that process starts you will know they are getting serious. Her's a link to the website in case you want to check it out, it takes some time to learn how to use it. http://www.occeweb.com/index.html
Thank you so much, you have been extremely helpful!