Selling Mineral Rights - ND and MT

Like many before me, I inherited rights for both ND & MT that began producing (ND) in 2010. Passed along by a grandmother to my father in the 70’s, I retained a full box of maps, dialogue, etc that not (1) single niece or nephew has shown any interest in.

MT, unless the past 2 years has changed things, has not produced any interest but ND has produced actively since 2010 and I (fortunately) still receive a stipend from what well has been maintained.

Granted, the reader would want to know location, etc but is unimportant at this time. What I seek is what others before me have requested. That is to find out who is a legitimate buyer of mineral rights that won’t slash an offering price by thinking a owner is desperate. I am not!

At 71 and with no children or anyone showing a remote interest in knowing the history or background dating back to 1920 for the land (sold years ago) and in particular the leasing rights (oil and gas) I look to liquidate and end ownership while still alive.

Continental is the company I have dealt with since 2010 and who I still receive payment from. It appears a younger brother sold his rights over 5 years ago without telling me and is unsupportive in telling me the how or to “whom” he sold to.

  1. How to negotiate a sale?
  2. How to determine “value” based on the history of production or “future” production?
  3. If selling and projecting forward, how many years does a person project out to…for example if X value per month is given x 12 months (1 year) x 10 years? 20 years? 50 years?

Any help will be appreciated. If contact is made or an email is provided, I seek valid representation and a legal name and/or phone number and not just a gmail or bogus account to contact.

Thank you to all who read or have supported others.

Firstly, Continental would probably be happy to buy it; you may have even seen this printed on your stubs. That would probably be the easiest, but if it’s a matter of getting the most for them you could do well on one of the auction sites.

In terms of determining a value, look up the production on the ND DMR site over the life of your well and multiply it by historical monthly oil prices allowing for reasonable deducts (~$10). Multiply this revenue number by your decimal, assume 5-10 more wells, and discount for PV. Projecting out based off your current income isn’t a good value in your case, because the production has gone way down since 2010; but, usually PDP is valued at 60 months.

It is not an easy decision. We dont have any children but we are 10 years younger than you. We are living in Europe and it has not been an easy travel to understand everything from Spacing Units, Oil Lease, Division Orders, Oil Companies or IRS. But as a pro. historical archivist I do know a lot about some part of the chain. We do have a section with CLR. Back in 2015 when this part of our lease (2 other sections was producing with another company) was about to end the 3 year lease period we got low ball offers (2,500 USD) to sell the acres. In the last minute CLR did put a well in the spacing unit. It has given us 3,000 USD per acre from 2015-2021. Then we got this paper from CLR to “drill out” and make a big unit of several sections. Shortly after we got new selling offers. 19,000 USD an acre was the highest offer. After CLR has put nearly all the wells online, we have since June 2021 received 27,937 USD per acre. 11-12 wells in a normal 2 section spacing unit. The bottom line: How many wells in a spacing unit do you have now? What Tier in ND do you have your minerals? When will CLR “drill out” your sections? Our family members selling the mineral rights back in 2010 did the worst business case that I know. Good luck and sorry that your family shows no interest.

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