Hello
Is anybody here familiar with counties in northeast West Virginia? After reading my long-winded background below, any advice, information, words of wisdom you have are welcome!
BACKGROUND:
My sister and I learned of mineral rights - not surface rights - left to us by our father and grandmother in Wirt County, WV. We were informed by a gas company who sent us a lease and some background information on our relatives through their genealogy/information gathering process. The lease offer was ridiculous (even being uneducated in the mineral rights/leasing arena, I know that the offer was absurd.) Since we were blindsided by the news of mineral rights and even having relatives by way of certified mail from a gas company, my sister and I have tried in vain to learn what we could about the property, acreage, mineral rights, leasing, and even the new-found relatives involved. That is tough to do.
The gas company released the names of the people with mineral and surface rights, but no contact information. It appears some people have both, surface and mineral, and others only have one or the other. Apparently, there are approximately 125 acres. There are (were) 7 surface owners (I am not one of those) and I know for certain one of them has passed away. There are 13 people with mineral rights, but that number could have gone up or down as well. From my internet research and telephone calls with the assessor's office and county clerk's office, I was able to determine that two or three of the people have died since the information gathering phase, most of the people still live in the region of Wirt County or fairly close (within a couple hundred miles), and some of the people are scattered around the country and do not care about the mineral rights.
I have been trying to revive the "project" and am having a very difficult time getting any more information than what was provided by the original gas company. I am wondering if our mineral rights were taken over by other relatives under the extinguishing dormant mineral interest act or something similar. I don't think they have that in WV, but not sure.
I have had free consultations with two different attorneys in the region who both said to do my own due diligence (to save on attorneys fees), make contact with as many people as I can in my familial pool, and research as much as possible before paying for any legal assistance. THAT being said, without the contact information for a lot of these mineral rights owners, I feel like I have come upon a dead end. It feels weird to take a trip out to WV to dig around. My home base is west coast and I didn't even know I had relatives beyond my sister, two aunts, and my deceased father so I do not know any of the people named in the original paperwork from the gas company.
Is this worth pursuing?
Can I purchase mineral rights from other family members to whittle down the pack?
How do I even go about finding these relatives and their contact information? A lot of them are not found via the internet.
In your opinions, is a trip to WV to look at paperwork and filings worth it? It is very difficult to do via telephone.
Any information or advice would be most helpful. Thank you in advance for words of wisdom!