A company recently leased a property in OK. and claimed they owned the minerals under said property. My question is, there are several other mineral interest owners under the property,how can the 1 company claim they own all of the interests? What percentage of interest owners are required for the company to proceed with their proposed activity?
Jeff:
You can always research records at the County Clerk's office in the county where the minerals are located. These records should indicate who owns the minerals in and around the property.
Do you mean they bought the leases & own all of the rights to explore? Or they own the actual minerals already?
They have leased a percentage of the royalty owners mineral rights.Yet there are several royalty owners who have not been leased. My question is are they required to have all the RI owners leased before preceding with operations? Is there a certain percentage of RI owners needed to start activity?
Jeff:
They must be the majority lease holder to drill. In some cases, others in the unit have leased to various companies. These companies, who have a smaller stake in the unit, will sometimes flip the lease to the majority leaseholder or participate in the well. Sometimes you can't guess who will actually drill the well until the very end as flipping in this business is very common.
Jeff, through pooling, the state will give them the totality of the right to explore the minerals, those who do not lease will be force pooled. Have you received a pooling election? The company may be putting out inaccurate information or they have a majority leasehold and are being a bit premature if the spacing has not yet been pooled. But yes, if you won't sell your right to explore the state will give it to a company and you a choice of royalties and bonus. If you receive a pooling election, don't dawdle because you only have 20 days to reply or they stick you with the highest bonus and lowest royalty, in the operators favor.
Thank you to all respondents. All advice has been informational & beneficial. This is a wonderful forum!!!