Yep, can’t say anything bad about SUNOCO, we received royalties from them for years, never a problem, paid promptly unlike some other companies I’ve dealt with. CONOCO was also good to deal with.
According to Spess, this well is producing 1bbl a day. Why would Sunoco be a player, having to do the bookwork around tiny royalty pays, with such a small output? I can see why Spess hangs in, they have a lot of leases that are old and conceivably very profitable to them but why is Sunoco staying around?
The pumper for the Spess lease simply calls Sunoco for an oil pickup whenever they get a tank full. Spess has numerous other leases, and Sunoco likely picks up many of these as well. The Division Orders were done long ago, and the the system is already in place. It makes perfect sense that Sunoco would continue picking up for the lease as long as it produces, as they do for thousands of other leases, small or large. Sunoco pays their own posted price for oil, and all of their overhead, large or small, is factored into that price.
If the well can “produce in paying quantities” it is allowed to continue to be valid and hold the lease. In this case, it is the 1/8th Spess lease from decades ago which is holding up Highmark from developing the section horizontally. Sometimes other companies or mineral owners will file a lawsuit against an operator claiming the well is not producing in paying quantities to still hold that lease and the court will conduct the test they use which has been established in Oklahoma through case law.
The court will choose a period of time (the period of time which the court chooses is always a hotly debated topic) and in that period of time the well has to produce oil and gas in quantities sufficient enough to yield a profit, to the operator, over the expenses of operating the well. Those expenses are not drilling costs but costs associated with pumping and lifting (pumper salary, wellsite equipment, electricity, etc).
JW_Anderson, We have had a piece of the Spangler Well (Blaine 18-16-13) in the family for decades, and I have records of my grand parents and my parents receiving small royalty checks. However, my brothers, our cousin, and myself have never received any royalty distribution even though we went through probate when mom died in 1996. Have you any idea what might be the best way to find out why we have not received any royalties or notices from Spess or whomever is the operator?
Did you or any of your relatives file an “Affidavit of Heirship” with the company paying the royalties? It’s very simple, no cost, if you did not the company probably has been paying the royalties into an account if they have no known heirs.
John, I have not filed an “Affidavit of Heirship”. I have assumed that since the estate of my late mother was probated in Watonga, any producers would find it easy to locate me and my brothers. In other mineral interests we’ve held the leasees have had not problem getting checks to us. Perhaps in this case we should go through the process with the Blaine County Clerk. Thank you for bringing this up. It may help solve our issues with this mineral interest in 18-16-13.
Larry, You don’t need an affidavit of heirship. You should however insure the Decree of Distribution is filed in the Blaine County Clerk’s office AND indexed for each property that was involved. If it was probated in Watonga, Blaine county it will be in the Count COURT Clerk’s office. FWIW, I don’t see a probate record on file.
You also need to notify the operator. Producers, by default, will not go looking for you or a probated estate. Yes, the landman will go looking for you to lease you! The operator or purchaser should have suspended the account. And they should have been sending the money to the unclaimed property fund of the last.
I just read up further into the thread. Keep pressing Spess The phone number of record is 918-358-5831. I would expect Sunoco is distributing the payments, but it might be difficult to get info from them as well. The production unit number for that well is 011-054251-0-0000. They might tell you if your mother is in the paydeck. Sunoco’s number is 281-637-6358
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Thanks Rick! I have tried to contact Spess a couple of times and keep getting the run-around, as in “my brother handles all that stuff. Leave your number and I’ll have him call you.” No call, over and again. Anyway, I will follow up on the leads you have given me and again, I appreciate the information since I am 2000 miles from Oklahoma.
All I can say is that we filed Affidavits of Heirship in Kingfisher, at that time Conoco said that once they received confirmation they would show us as owners and start routing the royalties to us which they did. When we had to do a probate a few years ago on minerals in Blaine County the probate lawyer we had also filed the Affidavits with the oil company.
Larry (and brothers), this is your cousin Renee (Rice) and I have been following your communications on the Forum and can’t figure out why you and your brothers (and cousin John) are having such difficulties proving your rightful inheritance. Did you guys ever receive copies of your mothers’ Wills? Were your properties deeded to you? All of this should be on record at the Watonga Court House complete with descriptions. Spess must be a small producer? We have always leased to Continental and Devon and have no issues whatsoever with either of them, but they are huge producers. Occasionally, they would mail out a letter listing all property owners in search of heirs to properties. Maybe Spess doesn’t have the same resources to be able to do that. If you don’t have copies of Wills or the deeds themselves, the Clerk’s office should be able to help. Sorry you are having this issue! BTW, none in my family have minerals in your area.
John, An Affidavit of Heirship in most cases is only treating the symptom, not the illness. His mother’s probate cures the title from her to him. That does not mean that there may be other curative issues above in the title chain. But the probate is not filed correctly with this property. That is an easy fix.
An AoH has minimal legal power. It use is based on the operator accepting the risk and paying off of it. It is a business decision of the operator. I have seen a subsequent operator suspend payment on an account the the original operator accepted an AoH on. I’ve seen operators lease with AoHs and then refuse to pay the production income. I have seen this many times.
When the AoH is not filed of public record and is instead submitted to the operator it is of even less value.
If you slap your television on the top to get it to come on, did you cure the problem? Or did you provide a temporary fix to make it through the days programs?
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Thanks Rick, I understand the process, have gone through it several times including probate and other matters. Also know there are plenty of crooks and con-men in the business and am very familiar with outfits that don’t pay up.
John, did they pay you suspended royalties that they held in your decedent’s account?
Actually there were two cases. In the first case royalties had been transferred to the Oklahoma State Treasurer because the oil company had no record of survivors (us) and once probate was completed, YES, the royalties were paid to us. In the second Affidavits of Heirship were filed immediately so the oil company just changed the names of the royalty owners and royalties were continued to be paid as regularly scheduled, they were never suspended. I’ve found that when things are handled in a timely manner the process is simple but if years have passed it gets more complicated especially if an estate had never been through probate. Our simplified probate took about a month. Hope that helps.
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