My mother received a declaration of interest letter from Plains Marketing LP, dated 2008, stamped URGENT and postmarked January 17, 2023. How urgent can it be? The letter was dated 15 years ago. The letter states that they don’t have a signed royalty agreement. My mother never signed a royalty agreement because she wasn’t aware of her royalty ownership. The company has extracted oil and gas from her property for over a decade, potentially without a signed lease and royalty agreement.
My mother learned of her royalty ownership when she received the letter in January 2023. After some digging, I discovered she is the royalty owner of 40(+) acres of minerals in CADDO Parish, Louisianna, specifically CADDO Pine Island.
The letter states that Plains Marketing LP acquired access to her oil and gas through Shell. My mother is unaware of any lease with Shell for land in Louisiana. Shell may have had a lease agreement with the previous royalty owner.
I’m trying to track down the original lease and determine if there are any unpaid royalties my mother can claim or if there is a statute of limitations on unclaimed royalties. I am unsure if I should contact Plains Marketing before I have sufficient knowledge of the situation to navigate it properly. I am trying to figure out if I should hire an auditor or get an attorney.
Most likely your mother has inherited this mineral right and the person she inherited it from signed a lease.
The most likely reason for lost heirs is that someone moved out of the parish - and/or didn’t have a succession/probate open. Only in certain situations are the oil companies going to put a lot of effort into finding you because it’s your responsibility to fuel file the required paperwork’s in the parish to transfer ownership in the public records.
If the oil company cannot find you - after some specified length of time they are supposed to turn over to the state unclaimed property find. So you could check her name, her parents name, etc. it’s going to be in the name of the last that had title for to prove ownership.
To find it: Start with her parents and run them grantee. You are looking for any deeds into them - or any judgment of possession - which is what is filed here that is akin to a private elsewhere. If you find a deed you then need to look for the deed out and you are looking for any mineral reservations.
if you get lucky and the property is listed in the judgment of possession. However, it is not required to be listed in order for transfer of ownership to heirs.
If nothing comes up for her parents - the people most likely to have transferee ownership to get are parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts who died with no heirs. The best place to start is probably determine if any relative ever lived in caddo parish and/of east Texas because we have a ton of missing Texas heirs in old production. It’s very close to Shreveport and a lot of people buying minerals in the 1940ish time we’re from east Texas.
Next you indirect your names and look for a lease - if there is more than one you need to establish which is the holding lease. The easiest way to do this is to research production on sonris.
You can actually start with production and look for the lease on the WI side but it usually takes longer and is definitely a more complicated process.