My brother and I were contacted by ATX Mineral Holdings in 2022 with an offer to buy our rights to 53 acres of lands situated in Ellsworth or any adjoining District in Tyler County” that we apparently inherited from our dad. As executor of my parents’ estates, I never saw any paperwork related to land ownership or the 2015 Lease with StatOil, which ATX brought to our attention. We have never seen a record of royalties paid out to our family, and a search in my Dad’s name returned no unclaimed money on record with the state. What are our first steps in finding out where royalty checks have been going for the last 10 years? I do have the parcel numbers provided by the company who wants to buy the land. I could use some guidance here.
First of all I wouldn’t sell your mineral rights to anyone because you may have some money to claim.
Are you paying taxes on any minerals in Tyler County? If so then that would be the first place to start looking at. You need to find out where the property is located at exactly and then find out if there are actually a well(s) on the property.
When I settled my grandmother’s estate there was no money in the state funds but there was money that was in an escrow account with 4 different oil and gas companies.
I think EQT bought out Stat Oil if I’m not mistaken.
If you know where your father got them, maybe from one of his parents or even a grandparent, you could see if a cousin might be collecting the money which might still be in the name of someone from an earlier generation.
We have no idea where it came from, I’ve never seen any paperwork and I don’t even know the names of any of the distant cousins. But that’s good thinking, I could do some digging up the family tree I suppose.
Thank you I appreciate that. I feel like my brother may have been contacted by Antero a few years ago, or that name came up for some reason. I was in the depths of grieving my parents so those memories didn’t really stick. But this is a new name I hadn’t heard of so it’s somewhere to start. Thanks
This is awesome to know. So I should start contacting those companies maybe? Or maybe start with stat oil then see if I can get more info about who took over from them…
No taxes, no documents of any kind. Who knows, we may end up owing taxes after we figure all of this out. 
This is exactly why I never signed the paperwork ATX sent us. They wanted to pay us $1000 for the 53 acres, claiming that it was unlikely to have been making any money.
Something about that didn’t feel right. And even if the Property was only bringing in a little bit of money, in this economy, every little bit helps.!
thanks for your response
If you still have the paperwork by chance then it should tell you exactly where the property is located at. You may want to contact the Tyler County Tax Department and start there. They may be able to tell you who or if any taxes are delinquent or not. They may also be able to steer you in the right direction as far as who to get in touch with to find out more details.
Here is a link to the Tyler County WV documents website If you go there and put in a family name, see if you see anything you recognize. This is not the old records; those are accessed from this site but using the Vault search which is more complicated. You could try Firm as search term and put in Statoil and see if anything looks like what you have been asked about, maybe acreage or something. It could give you clues about somebody involved. You said there was a 2015 lease that you were told about. If you have information on that, it could narrow your search. Ask again if you would like more ideas but this could help you start to see what is involved.