A person receives a letter wanting to purchase mineral rights they didn’t know they owned.
The person is able to confirm that they are an heir of someone who is on the pay list of a company XYZ that is producing minerals and identify the royalty deed from which their NPRI interest is derived.
The royalty deed defines the participation, percentage, and royalty factors used to calculate the revenue. However the royalty factor may not be correct because it is dependent on the current lease between the producer and the “executive” owner of the mineral rights.
What is the simplest and/or cheapest way for the individual to identify the current lease document to find the royalty reserve?
Contact the operator’s Division Order department by certified mail return receipt and ask what you need to do to get into pay status if you are an heir. Ask them for a copy of the lease that is tied to the NPRI for your records.
If you know the state, county and legal description, then you should be able to search for a recorded copy of the relevant lease. You may also be able to determine who is producing through various agency records.
A forum member could probably direct if you include the state and county information.
This post is not legal, tax or investment advice. Reading or responding to this post does not create an attorney/client relationship.
Thank you. That is essentially what I ended up doing, but without the concise language you suggest. Since certified return receipt letters are now nearly $10 a pop, I am wondering if there is a public record way to find the information.
Richard,
I know the state, county, legal description and the producer but am looking for the specific current lease that controls the royalty. I have accessed various counties on-line records for different interests and generally find that I can search on names but end up with a large number of documents to review (purchase). Is there some mechanism for searching on the producer name and some other factor such as lease number, well name etc that I may not be aware of? Particularly interested in Midland, Martin, Fisher and Glasscock counties.
I work in Midland County. If you send the name of the person who received the royalty deed I can take a look for current lease, I mean, if its a simple search anyway. Sometimes its easy and sometimes its not.
Jeff, your issue is trying to tie a royalty or mineral interest to an OGL. The operator/purchaser may have this information by way of a title opinion or they may be be working from a sequence of pay decks which will not provide the information. You may wish to take Tee’s offer since pulling this title issue together can prove tricky for non-professionals. Texasfile.com is a good source for county records.
Thank you for the offer. I am not trying to get others to do research for me - I am trying to learn more efficient ways to find the information I need.
The case that I am currently working on stems from document 1951-5800 in Midland county. I don’t know if this holding is on the producers pay list yet, as 3 wells have just been completed in the area and don’t show any production yet. I hate to bug the producer, Pioneer Natural Resources. I am trying to figure out how to zero in on the current lease between some unknown (to me) executive lease party and PNR that would allow me to purchase the document that tells what the royalty reserve is.
When I try to search on PNR (spelled out), I find about 4000 documents and scanning the list I cannot find a match for my legal description. Trying to search on the lease name, the abstract number, and or lease number did not locate the document I am looking for. Of course, my problem may be that I don’t know what to look for in the list of documents and am passing over what I need.
I do not know anything about Midland, but I find the OGML by looking up the recorded unit declaration at the county clerks’s office. The declaration lists all leases pooled to the unit. You can also look up the P12 on the TRRC under the drilling permit for tracts pooled to get an idea. We have 640ac gas units mostly in my county, with many leases pooled under a unit declaration or communitization agreement for older wells.
Jeff, you are attempting to find the original grant or assignment. You must use the person’s name that you are an heir to the interest to find the document that issued the grant or assignment. Then you must determine if they were an original grantee/assignee or were they an heir. From that point you can search for the OGL that controls the royalty. Participation in a unit may be further defined by a unit agreement that is filed of record or the horizontal unit participation that is filed with the RRC. All of these points have further complications and can be very difficult for the non-professional to navigate. You have to start in the county clerk’s office for this information if PNR is not willing to provide any assistance. Even if PNR is willing to help, you still have to go to the county records.
Is it Patch Energy reaching out? I just got a letter from them as well for the same thing, rights I didn’t know about that my grandfather bought. I was able to get the information by doing a records search by his name, the letter you got should have that on there. I was able to find the original deed, the receivership papers and the lease. You can view them and save them and print the non-official copies without paying for them. At this point you don’t need an official copy. Just click on the record. If the rights are in a receivership, you can contact the district clerk with the receivership info to find out the royalty balance.
I appreciate everyone who has taken the time to respond and the info they have provided.
J_Walker
I live in Oklahoma and have very small NPRI interests in several areas in Texas. I have to rely on on-line searches, as the cost of traveling to the clerk’s office is prohibitive. I inherited one half of Blanche Margro’s interest in 40 acres in abstract A-552 via document 1951-5800. Preston-Shackleford wells 15L, 15I and 15K pass thru this holding. PNR is the producer. I have examined the plat for each well and the documents available via the drilling permit on the RRC site. These wells are allocation wells. No unit appears to be involved. I cannot find any reference to a P12 document. By OGML are you referring to the current lease between PNR and (unknown to me) the leasing party?
James_Garner1
With all due respect, I am not trying to find the original grant - please see above. I am trying to find out how to navigate the county records I can access online to do a more efficient search for who PNR is presently leasing from for these wells.
jenmcmur
I have not heard of Patch Energy and they are not to my knowledge involved in this situation.
Jeff, for you to discover who controls the executive rights associated with your NPRI, then you potentially have to go back to the the original grants to discover who retained the executive rights. Once that is discovered, then you can trace the executive rights through time and link them to an OGL. There are times that you get a bit lucky and will catch a Ratification of an OGL that mentions the party from whom you inherited. You can then come forward from that date. Many E&P Companies require Ratification of OGL’s, but probably more do not so it can be a bit of a crap shoot. I just took a quick look at Margro in Midland Co. There is an old Gas Division Order with Magnolia DR | 329 - 60.
This does reference an OGL, so it could help your search a bit if I caught the correct tract.
Mr. Garner is pointing you in the right direction on this, especially in looking for the lease ratification. That document should provide the OGML (oil, gas & mineral lease). It would be risky for the operator not to have the lease ratified by the NPRI owner. We have NPRI owners in our minerals and we require that the lease be ratified.
Wouldn’t you think that the entity that wants to purchase the mineral rights or interest would have found the lease since they are able to make the offer? Try to contact the Executive owner. They may give you a copy or they may be willing to make you a better offer.
The problem is Jeff does not know who owns the executive rights. Once he does the title research he will be able to determine if the related OGL is filed of record or whether he needs to contact the lessor in the case of an OGL Memo.
The responses on here, though providing good information, seem to be saying the only way I can find out who the executive owner is is to start way back when and follow documents forward to the present. Is there some reason a person can’t locate who the producer contracted with and then search that person’s name to find where they acquired the rights and so on backwards?
Most of my experience over the past two years involves parcels where the producers already had the name of the person I inherited from on the pay list. Under those conditions, my claim had already been validated by some other landman and I simply needed to prove my inheritance. Under those circumstances, why would I need to do a full title search? What possible gain is there to me?
On one very small parcel, that I discovered on my own, by finding the royalty deed on file, it appears that my DI is larger than on other properties that I am receiving royalties on. My understanding is that the royalty reserve can be altered by the current lease, therefore I would like to find the current executive owner. My thinking was that if the current royalty reserve was at least as high as on the royalty deed, I could use the figures along with RRC production information to estimate potential revenue to determine whether or not I could afford to hire a landman or attorney to prove title if the producer does not contact me on their own.
So, again, the question I seek an answer to is: “What is the most efficient way to find out who the producer is leasing a parcel from”. WITHOUT DOING A FULL TITLE SEARCH
Jeff, some times a pro can horse back a title; however, this method is only going to confuse the novice. The reason people are saying the same thing is because it is the required method. You can contact the local abstract company and ask if they can perform the search as an alternate method. A Landman should be able to solve this minor problem in less than a day for under $500.
I looked up 1951-5800 on the Midland CC website. This document describes override interests (ORRI) conveyed to various individuals, including Ms. Margro, on 5 separate OGMLs. I do not see that it conveyed non-participating interests. Much of the advice you received was misguided on your assertion that you had an NPRI.
So, the OGMLs you have an ORRI in are listed in the document. You would need to look up each of those leases to see what royalty applies, and the legal description of each lease to see if it is included in the wells you identified.