Flipping an oil lease

If you lease to a landman can he flip the lease to an oil company. If so what does that mean for you the owner of the mineral rights?

If lease is flipped ( which happens all the time / normal practice), there is no impact on the owner of the mineral rights. All the lease terms stay same. And with the flip, mineral rights owner is now in a position to get their lease drilled and get royalty payments

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That's what independent landmen often do. They do the work to gather up all the leases and assemble the package to sell to a company who will drill. Potentially you could sign a lease with a specific company, but they too could be bought out, or decide not to drill and sell or flip their interest to another company. You too could potentially sell your rights or minerals or royalty interest to someone else or give them to family. All that happens probably every day and twice on Sunday.

For those that are preparing to lease and your concerned who ends up with it , you might add something to the effect ; No assignment of this lease, or interest therein, may be made without written approval of Lessor, any assignment made without such approval shall be absolutely void...........and the purported assignor shall remain liable to Lessor ...........on all the covenants and conditions of this lease. This also helps locate the new lessee when searching permits et al at the RRC site

We always need to have an "if you do this we will do that"/ typical legal format.

Thanks, you all have given me the answers i was seeking.

Over two years ago, we signed an Oil and Gas Mineral Lease for our family partnership’s interest in 92 acres in Pecos County. We think the lease was flipped but have not heard anything about what is happening there. How do I get information without traveling to the Pecos courthouse (a long way from Houston)?

Hi Carolyn,

You can go create an account on Texasfile.com and for a fee you can search through the deed records and see who now currently owns the lease you signed.

Hope this helps, Cam

Hey Carolyn,

Looks to me like Imperial flipped it to PCore in 2017. Unfortunately, it looks unlikely that development will occur there in the primary term, I would guess it will revert back to you next year. I can shoot you a copy of the filing if you wish. (Happen to have access to a Drillinginfo license for time being)

Cheers.

I can’t believe you were able to find that information so quickly!!! Thank you thank you thank you… I guess the “play” was not as hot as they thought. My sister and I (who grew up in Midland) are trying to keep the Family Partnership going, but my independent operator father and geologist mother were the experts. I often find myself benefitting from the kindness of strangers in trying to manage things, and you are now officially added to the Friends list! In your debt, Carolyn B

Thanks Cam! Sounds like a good way to start long distance….deeply appreciate the help!

My name is Eileen and my family and I own 640 acres in Pecos county. Do we need to hire a land man to see who holds the deep rights lease. We started out with Dixie oil company back in 1925. They have flipped or sold it through the years and we don’t know who is holding us up for deep drilling…we sit next to the Yates field and we hardly get any money from the small oil company who keeps the lease valid…can anyone help me please!

If I were you, I would hire an attorney first of all; they have their own land men who do their research of county records. They are also very familiar with the companies who do the leasing and active, as well as the “fly by night” people you need to stay away from. Believe me, it is worth your money to have legal people help you. I hired the Drennan firm in Lubbock who also have an office in Midland and I was very happy with the work they did for me.

Thank you Eva for your time. I will take your suggestion into consideration :blush::blush:

If you post the well name(s), legal description and operator, then you will get more responses. There are many very old leases which cover all depths and are HBP by continuous production over the years. Often the rights under the lease have been severed by depths and the shallow well operator may not own the deep rights. However, shallow wells will keep the deep rights from expiring. Be aware that the deep rights may be owned by multiple entities, rather than a single owner, and it could be problematic to organized all those owners to drill. If it is a hot area, then some company will do the research to pull this together. Good luck.

Sure, thank you…we are in section 539 of the Arnold and Barrett survey, Pecos county Texas. The company who is producing now is called Shallow Productions. Millineum had it for years and really made a mess of our property. Our goal is to find out who has the deep rights so we can either get them to go back or possibly release us. I know there is a lot of activity in this area now. Thanks for your response and suggestions.

The Toborg Unit is producing 325+ bbl per month. So the operations are most likely profitable and the lease will not have expired due to lack of economic production. There does not seem to be horizontal activity in the immediate area. Kinder Morgan continues to drill shallow wells in the Yates field. It is rare for owners of deep rights in a lease to simply give up their interests as that has a potential economic value.

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Thank you for your reply