Thanks! Having the section numbers makes it a lot easier to spot if there are leases in my sections or not.
I called the NM Land Office about some of the old leases of the form L-1234 that I was not able to lookup. It turns out the missing leases are just on microfiche and are not in the online database. The office is able to look them up even though I can’t see them on the website.
The leases of the form “NM-12345” are federal leases. They can be looked up on the BLM site:
https://reports.blm.gov/report/MLRS/119/CR-Serial-Register-Page-Oil-and-Gas-Geothermal
But my old lease serial numbers are in the legacy format. I have to convert them to the current BLM format. There’s a section on that page called “Legacy Serial Number Examples” that explains how to do it. To look up a legacy lease like “NM-12345”, I would actually look up “NMNM 012345”. The spaces and leading zeros are required. The current lease number may not have the same digits that the legacy did. A legacy lease like “NM-12345” may have a modern lease serial number like “NM-105368193”.
Thanks for all the help. This info has been very useful to help pare down the list of royalty interests that may still be active.