I LIVE IN PA. AND ONLY HAVE THE GAS RIGHTS ON 1/5 OF MY PROPERTY, THE OTHER PORTION WAS RESERVED AROUND 75 YEARS PRIOR.
NONE OF THE HEIRS TO THE RIGHTS EVEN KNOW THEY OWN THEM. THE LEASING AGENT TOLD ME THEY WOULD NOT PURSUE THE HEIRS AS WELL. I WAS TOLD BY A LAWYER THAT THE COURTS WOULD NOT RECOGNIZE A QUIET TITLE PROCEDURE AS LEGAL. ANY SUGGESTIONS?
I presume that you wish to reclaim the rights under your property? From a brief search, while some have proceeded with a quiet title action and a court may have granted the surface owner the rights, it still looks iffy. You can check if the tax assessor has ever had a seperate tax ticket generated for the moneral interests. If this was never done, you have been paying taxes on the minerals you do not own all this time. The best suggestion I saw was that you report these interests that you do not own to the tax assessor so you can stop paying taxes on them, when the taxes go unpaid for a period of time the mineral rights should go to auction for unpaid taxes and you can try to purchase them then. I think it would be great to purchase mineral rights at auction with a producing well already. If it were a sealed bid auction and knowing how cheap oil companies can be, I think if you offered 50% of their value, you would probably win. Good luck.
Good news for PA. residents with my problem, there is a Senate bill being introduced by Senator Eugene Yaw that would revert rights to the present land owner if the reserved rights have not been exercised or developed after a 50 year period. I urge all PA. residents who have clouded titles to contact their legislators and have them support SB 258. http://senatorgeneyaw.com/
With my limited research I saw bills proposed for 10 years and 21 years of dormancy that have been in the works for years. The operators can develop anyway with a 87.5% net revenue interest in the missing mineral owners interests and if the owners don't pop up after 5 years the 12.5% royalty goes to the state, as it stands now. I think I see why the dormancy bills have not passed.
Pete - I'd stay far afield of Louisiana, and be wary of the 14+ other states that have some form of dormant mineral act or lapse statute.
Some things are for the good of the people, the common cause, but I am certain the Indians who felt like they or no one originally owned the land under where you stand and live will agree with you about stealing. Don't forget the British who felt this was there land, they also agree with you.
I think the way it should have been done in first place would be if a landowner reserved the mineral/gas/oil rights on a piece of land then, they and their future heirs should bear the responsibility of paying the yearly taxes due on the land and their potential investment. Why shouldn't the current land owner have any rights when they are the ones paying the custodial fees on the property? I can guarantee you my heirs will know about my mineral rights, If the prior owners were foolish enough not to keep up with their interests then they in my opinion have already moved to relinquish the rights.
Sorry Pete, but I believe I should be entitled to some of the rights being the current custodian of the property. Bottom line being if you want something you should be prepared to pay to keep the entitlement.
There will always be people who think of themselves only. I hate to imagine a world where there are no laws for the good of the collective. Rights such as Imminent domain are for the good of the people as a whole, it's not stealing. Dormant mineral laws were created for a reason and it wasn't to steal them. The world consist of we and us, not just I and me, some just don't understand it.
Pete, In North Dakota the severed mineral rights do not automatically revert to the surface owner. The bar is set pretty low though. Notice to the last address of record, possibly 40 or more years out of date. The search of two or more public databases. Notice in the local county newspaper with the greatest circulation or possibly the "official" county newspaper, which means if the county does not have a newspaper, they use the nearest counties paper that does or the largest circulation paper in the region. There is alot of room for abuse. Suppose you search and find the owners in one database, do you just continue to search until you find two databases in which the owners can not be found?
I helped some nice people who were about ten days from the surface owner succeeding to their mineral rights. I was only a small help, informing them that it was not too late to record a statement of claim as they had 10 days left, that I would also send a notice to the surface owner and the surface owners attorney in the matter with tracking, for good measure. The true hero of the story was a sleazy oil man who told the mineral owners that the surface owner was about to reclaim them and that if they wanted to realise anything from them they needed to sell to him for 1/10 the acres value. 10 days was plenty of time to record a statement of claim once you know that is what you need to do. These people had leased their minerals within the last 20 years but the lease was never recorded. The sleazy oil man was the previous lessee. I can't swear to anything in this case but I have heard of lessees urging surface owners to attempt to reclaim the mineral rights under their surface so that the potential lessee can lease the minerals from the surface owner. Notably there is a case online involving Diamond Resources being sued by the surface owner they encouraged to reclaim the minerals under their surface, even after the mineral owner surfaced to complain. Yes I do find oil and gas entertaining.
Of course the mineral owners could recover their minerals from surface owner/s who succeeded to them for at least a short period of time before the surface owner undertakes a quiet title action to perfect title, but the mineral owners would in that case have to reimburse the surface owners legal fees, to regain their minerals. Of course if the surface owner who succeeded to the mineral rights leased the rights, they would get to keep the lease bonus and any royalty paid before the mineral owner recovered their minerals from the surface owner and of course the lease would remain.
I know a lot of people that would disagree they were properly compensated for something they didn't want to sell, they felt like you their property was being stolen. There are rules and regulations that people must live by, one can not come in later and say boo hoo it's not fair, if you lost something just who's fault was it. No I don't understand people who complain about money when there are plenty of high paying jobs that require no experience so I don't care to hear about someone who talks of their bills and mouths to feed. They are begging for people to work in high paying jobs in many states, people just want to do what they want to do and then complain about money. When I needed money to feed my family I didn't sit around whining about it, you do what you have to do and I never lived beyond my means.
There are valid reasons supporting both a perpetual ownership regime and a lapse regime, and none of them require the use of ad hominem attacks. Which regime is to be followed is a policy decision to made on the state level, and I don't fault that policy decision by the various states one bit. There are good reasons on both sides.