Any idea or suggestion about finding someone who can look at all the properties I own and verify that I am getting paid on everything due me? It’s around 75 properties in a dozen states. A few years ago, I was signing a lease offer by a Landman and in passing he told me I was owed Royalties held in suspense for a parcel in Garvin County? He wouldn’t tell me how much but could clearly see there was production in a section 6 where I held title. Guy offered to buy this parcel but wouldn’t tell me the amount owed. Kind of a hateful thing to do as I literally just signed his lease offer with no revisions or demands etc. Then he ghosted me and wouldn’t return my calls/emails!
Anyway, I am busy running my own construction company and the learning curve is too steep for me to run down every property and find out if any production is there. Several of these parcels have visible wells nearby in satellite photos but I have no idea on spacing? Also, I have a few producing properties where I have decimal interest but I don’t know spacing of wells to determine how many net royalty acres I own. I have a property in North Dakota where I once was receiving decent regular checks but now their accounting department says they overpaid me a whole bunch and quit sending out checks? I asked if they would verify my acreage and they wouldn’t? I would like to find an expert and pay them a daily rate to just research if any production is happening in these areas and if I am owed money. I would also like confirmation or estimate of total mineral acres I have in these parcels that have production.
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That seems like a HUGE undertaking.
I would find the time to start researching this yourself because it belongs to you. I’m currently doing the same thing from a gas lease back from 2010. It’s not fun but it beats spending time finding someone to invest their time let alone having to pay them out of pocket.
I’m living this nightmare of research too- good luck bud
Start with what you know and then work from there.
The fastest first thing you can do is check www.missingmoney.com for every state where you may own minerals. Use your name and also your ancestors’ names to find money which was escheated by the companies. Look in the states where you or your ancestors lived and also Delaware. That can get you started with a few minutes of searching. You can then fill out the claim forms and get started on recovering that set of monies. May take from 3-6 months for your request to work through their queues.
Do you have a good list of what you own-by state, county, description (township, range, section or block, abstract, section if Texas)? You can save a lot of money just by being organized. A manager is going to need that up front. And your search results from Missing Money can help you start to fill the list in.
The National Association of Royalty Owners has Certified Minerals Managers who can help with this sort of work. You might want to hire one starting with the state where you have the most minerals. www.naro-us.org. NARO also has excellent webinars by the Chapter presidents on how to find data in the producing states. Once you know where to look, it doesn’t take all that long to track down the properties, wells and spacing units.