Ownership relative to wellhead location

My wife inherited mineral rights from her North Dakota farmer dad. One of her siblings provided us with a list of 47 wells she says we have an interest in. Sure enough, about ten of those wells are producing very nicely, so all the mineral rights information and proposed wells permitted/drilled/producing has been perfect.

On the ND state oil/gas site I’ve checked on the productivity of a batch of nine new wells, that have been producing very robustly since around September / October 2018. I called the oil company Whiting Oil, who also is the operator of another batch of our wells, but they said the extraction of the oil is from sections 6 & 7, while the wellhead itself is in section 1, and our mineral rights cover section 1, so since the extraction itself is from different sections than our section 1 mineral rights, we have zero interest and will not be receiving any division orders. Does this sound right - the actual extraction point / wellhead is in my section 1, but because the horizontal extraction takes place largely in other sections that we have no mineral rights?

You are only paid on the sections that have actual perforations in them. The surface location is often in a different section because it takes about a quarter mile to make the turn from vertical to horizontal and they want as many perforations in a section as they can get in the horizontal part. Whiting is correct.

OK; thanks a bunch for the explanation / heads up! I guess that whittles my (wife’s) new well list down from 47 to 30. I just posted a question about what confidential status means on 14 of the 30 remaining wells…trying to understand how all this works…

In certain states, (ND being one of them), they are allowed to keep a well confidential for a certain number of months. This means that they do not have to post the completion report until that time passes. Are you familiar with the ND oil and gas division website? Great place to look up things.