All I know is what my brother told me, which is what my the person at Cimarex told him, when he called them asking them why they were sending my father payments when my father didn’t have a lease with them.
SHE said: in the state of New Mexico there are things called “drilling pools” where they group together sections. So even though they weren’t drilling on my father’s land in section 12, they WERE drilling in a “drilling pool” that contained both section 12 and section 13. So since they were drilling on the drilling pool that included my father’s land, they were required to pay royalty payments (not sure if “royalty” is the right word here).
This is all 3rd and 4th hand information, so I only know what my father told my brother, who told me.
According to my brother there are no leases that WE owned for the payments my dad was getting. It only makes sense to me that somebody has a lease that pertains to those payments, but according to my brother it isn’t my dad (or us now).
I honestly don’t know.