Hello. I’m so glad I found this website. 25 years ago I inherited my great grandfather’s gas and oil lease. I have been to the site, and it is still pumping. I live close by. However, my grandfather had eight children, who each had four or five children down the line and so on and so on. I don’t have any documents on land or ownership. I also have no contact with with any of my family cousins for decades. What do I do? The majority of all of us grandchildren have all sold their rights to the lease. I refused to sell. I receive about $40 to $50 every quarter for the last 20 years. But the receipts that they send shows millions of dollars being made. How do I know if I’m deserved more money? They recently offered me $1,000 to buy me off and I refused. Can anyone help me find any information on this?
Your royalties are based upon your net acres, the actual spacing acres, the royalty and maybe a percentage factor depending upon the type of well. So if your grandfather had 40 acres and it was split among eight children and then their children, you probably have a very small acreage position. If the lease is very old and at 1/8th (12.5%), then the royalty will also be small. Wells decline in volume over time, so the amount being produced is probably much smaller now.
To get your actual equation, you can send a certified mail return receipt to the Division Order department of the operator. Use your check stub to tell them your name, the name of the well, your owner number (on the check stub), the decimal amount on the stub. Ask them for your net acres, royalty amount and the equation that they used to calculate your decimal. The check stub shows the gross amounts reported by the operator for the sales of products in the millions, but there may be hundreds to thousands of mineral owners who each get their own small piece of the pie.