Hi, I was contacted by a landman in January identifying me as a non-participant mineral interest owner of a piece of land where their company would like to drill and pool the oil. When he sent me the deed for the land in question, it included two other parcels of land. All three parcels were bought from the same person and sold to the same person with my grandparents retaining a 1/16th mineral interest in all three parcels of land. On the Texas Railroad Commission website, I found one of the parcels has an operating well on it from the 70s. I found signed contracts for the well that had the name of the person that my grandparents had sold the land to, but my family's name was not on the lease. I talked to the land man in the other deal and he felt pretty confident that I'm an NPRI owner in this land as well. I contacted the general land manager at the operating company to tell him about my findings. He was receptive at first especially when I eneded up confusing him and he thought thier landman had contacted me about a lease. We got that straightened out and then I sent him the deed and he said it looked like I very well could be an NPRI owner and that he would call me back in a day or two. It's been a few months now and he will not return my emails where I have also included additional documentation to support my claim. My question to this forum is does an operating company have an obligation to issue a title opinion when a person comes forward with these types of claims or is it up to me to find my own lawyer to issue a title opinion and present it to the operating company?
Just depends who you get on the phone---one person no help the next sent doc. et cetera and if less than 25000they can pay without crt.-- these thieves are holding your money an paying no interest. They should help. I came across several of these worth thousands and bottom line they would rather help than get into a pissfight with lawyers. Threaten the nonhelpers and ask for names of him/her and bosses and suddenly they have changes in attitude
Thanks for the advice Joe! You gave me the push I needed. I called a VP at the operating company and now they are being very responsive!
joe dillon said:
Just depends who you get on the phone---one person no help the next sent doc. et cetera and if less than 25000they can pay without crt.-- these thieves are holding your money an paying no interest. They should help. I came across several of these worth thousands and bottom line they would rather help than get into a pissfight with lawyers. Threaten the nonhelpers and ask for names of him/her and bosses and suddenly they have changes in attitude
be sure and send a letter to this VP thanking him-----hahah just lets him know you got his name