I know that there’s a way to see the other mineral owners on our same land. I even came across a program / public records online that showed this (who the mineral rights owners were, on each section) but I cannot remember how/where I found this. Wondering if somebody here can remind me (@NMoilboy perhaps?)
Our mineral rights are in:
EDDY COUNTY
Township 25 South / Range 28 East.
Section 11: SENE
Section 12: SWNW, NWSW
Here’s the backstory of why I want this info, in case it matters:
We own 120 acres and of that HALF of the mineral rights (so 60 “mineral acres” - not sure if that’s how you term it).
We have been approached by a seismic surveying company who is trying to strong-arm us into letting them do seismic tests on our land, for basically nothing. When we declined their very poor offer, he said “well, then I’ll just go to the other mineral owners and get THEIR approval, and then you won’t even get anything”.
We now want to reach out to the other mineral owners on our same land, to perhaps try to band together, to get a better deal out of the situation. (The deal we want is: We allow them to do the survey on our land, but we also get a copy of the results for ourselves. They denied this and said they would go around us by just getting approval from the other owners. So I want to reach out to those owners to see if we can band together as a united front, and maybe we all get a seismic survey out of it too).
Thanks for any help!
PS: As this situation has caused several questions to arise, I am going to make a few other posts, with each specific question.
I think I answered my own question here. Via countyrecords.com, I then did a search in Eddy county, for the specific range and township we are in. It’s a very cumbersome way to go about it, because I have to weed through each entry and see if they have the same sections as us. If anybody knows a faster way, I would be appreciative to hear.
See my other comments to your other posted questions about the seismic survey and the technicalities of the situation. You wlll not be able to get a copy of the survey for yourselves. The data is proprietary and probably costs millions of dollars to shoot and covers many square miles of area, so not just your acreage. It is owned by the operators who contracted to have it done. They are stating common business practice and are not out to “get you”. You may be able to get a road improvement or a fence fixed as they go across your land, so that is an avenue to try.
Keep in mind that if you don’t allow the company to do seismic, and they don’t secure any seismic, they may just drill next door or around you. thnk of your acreage as the hole of a donut. In other words, you may end up costing yourself.
I would guess that anything that anybody wants to know from this seismic shoot is not gonna be helpful on your acreage anyhow. They just need continuous receiver/transmitter coverage over a large area to get a “good” survey.
Your stuff is drilled through to the Wolf D (or whatever we are choosing to call the gassy Wolfcamp zone 1200’ below WC top). There is nothing below that with any real value. Your Wolfcamp is pretty much developed in E2 of Sec 11 and W2 of Sec 12. An operator should have a pretty good feel for the shallower zones. They aren’t going to share the survey with you, but I don’t think anybody (you or the operator) is going to get much use from this survey if they did.
There are more wells that will get drilled on your acreage but I’m struggling to see where this survey info would be helpful to that development. Hell, there is a good of chance as any that this survey info is not going to help development at all and is only useful for deep basement fault interpretations for the inevitable earthquakes that are gonna happen when they dump a billion barrels into the Devonian in Eddy County.
You should get something out of it from the survey company, but it’s probably not much. As the surface value of 25s28e is…um…minimal. To be kind.
Thanks for the reply nmoilboy. Any and all additional information to better understand this situation helps!
You say that the surface value is minimal. Would you mind explaining why? And actually, I don’t really undrestand what you mean by “surface” value. Is there a difference between surface value and non-surface value (or however you would call that)? Like, does our land have a low surface value, but a higher non-surface value? I don’t really understand any of this. Would you mind just explaining what you mean by that, and why the value is low? Thank you!
Re: surface value. Its just out in the middle of nowhere. With nothing going on beyond oil and gas. They aren’t tearing up a golf course or a park to do this survey, they are running big trucks over scrubbrush and dirt. No offense to my fellow NMexicans, it’s just crappy land.
If they have to tear up your farmland or roads or irrigation to do things on the surface, the “damages” paid to the surface owner are going to be high. In this case, not very high.
I think of it as “surface value” and “mineral/subsurface value”. Your mineral value is high. Your surface value is not.