Then the next important question is whether your minerals are leased or not and the terms, most relevant I would think at this point would be royalty %. If I were considering buying someone’s minerals I would be thinking that I am not really buying 100% of the minerals, only the % I would receive any income from… the royalty.
In short… I feel a lease, in the Bakken, that is held by production, at let’s say 20% royalty, has sold the other 80% to the lessee… for all practical purposes. So it is possible, (if you have a 15%-16% royalty, which wasn’t uncommon for a lease 4 years ago because a lot of those leases were soon to be expiring 3 and 5 primary year leases.) that you might consider selling your 16% for $6,500 an acre. But you should do a little simple math first to feel good about any decision.
Calculate how much you have been getting every month for the last 4 years, per well. Then throw in some numbers for each possible future well… future and current money needs… then see how that balances with selling… This is all filler here by the way until the experts show up and ask you the following… where are your minerals by geographic specific location… they can then look it up, see who the current operator is, the quality of the wells, a little speculation on the EUR, and then give you some useful advice.
My final 2 cents is that you consider what your royalty percentage is and assume that your lease will be held by production until all economically recoverable minerals are gone, thereby practically owning whatever your royalty percentage is in those minerals… and even though the industry will tell you that you can’t consider the following, I do… When these operators lease from people they do not figure the bonuses on a “per well” basis… so obviously they don’t consider that when valuing the minerals, “when it comes to buying or offering leases that is”… we all should… divide the bonus and value per acre by the number of wells and then see how it looks. Some spacings are going to see more than 8 wells… I doubt any producing spacing right now will end up with less than 8 before this is over… anyway good luck.