Occidental Permian / Gaines County / Tracts into "Ventures" DO issues

General Mineral Rights Discussion
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I don’t post often so I hope I have made this clear, sorry it is so long.

I am trying to contact Occidental Permian about recent division orders they sent to myself and the members of my cousin group. The legal descriptions are all in Gaines County TX Block AX PLS survey -parts of sections 45, 46, 47, 52 and 53.

I don’t know exactly why they are sending new division orders; the ancestors have been in pay status on these old leases (maybe 1940 something?) for quite a while - “held by production.” I came into ownership on these in 2021 after Mom passed in 2020. Any insight on what is going on in general would be of interest, but I’m trying to correct one omission on mine and an error on another.

The division orders seem to be renaming old “Tracts” into “Ventures” with separate ventures for oil and gas in each tract. As we usually do, we check the information on the DO between the cousin group members. So far, I’ve found that I have one gas “venture” missing even though I have line item on the DO for the corresponding oil tract / venture. I didn’t get an autoreply on email and I’ve left a message at the Houston office. We have other sections in the Gaines / Yoakum area and wonder if the new division orders will continue for these tracts as well.

Another group member has half of their interest in their personal name and half in their LLC - and even though we have a DO showing only the LLC and they have been in pay for the last five years with the LLC. They were told by someone in Houston Occidental that they would have to hire a lawyer to remedy this.

These problems sound like clerical errors, not legal issues, but we can’t seem to find the right person to correct them. Any ideas? Thoughts on why they are producing new Division Orders on these old tracts / units?

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Oxy Permian may be reorganizing. I know they have divested several properties in W TX to Hilcorp.

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Thank you. We’ve also seen that with Hilcorp in Gaines / Yoakum. In Howard it is BML that is payor on some of the old vertical wells. I know that there are some newer OXY horizontals in the Gaines / Yoakum area, but I haven’t taken time to map them out, or compare the well’s depths. In these old pooled tracs, we have never received new DO’s per well. Having read about the “flooding” of these old fields, I didn’t expect to see much going on there other than that handing off to other operators. I don’t remember seeing anything about the geology in the area having stacked oil areas. What I don’t know could fill volumes.

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I do not own anything in Gaines and Yoakum, so I have not studied the development potential. In so many cases companies just accept a previous paydeck and continue to pay without the issuance of Do’s. This is the case of the OXY Permian to Hilcorp.

I have never been impressed by the OXY DO admin process. But then, that has never been their strong suit. The people that work there are great and very helpful.

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when I’ve found a live human being, most of them have been helpful. I just haven’t found one yet and apparently the person that one of my group found was not helpful. I’ll keep trying.