T&P RR CO T4S Blk 41 sections 19,20,21,28,29,30.
I recently inherited mineral rights in the above sections (along with some others), and I am in the process of gathering information about my holdings. My goals, aside from getting ownership transferred to me with the known operators and the counties (both in progress), include making a spreadsheet of all of my holdings, understanding and verifying property tax and royalty statements, and searching for what other leases that might intersect with my mineral rights to see whether there are other operators that I might need to contact . It is towards this latter goal that I am posting today.
I am new to all of this, but so far I have developed a series of mental models of how to proceed. I’ll speak at the section level, though I understand that it might make more sense to speak at the abstract level as some of my rights span counties.
My first mental model: I imagine a large chessboard where the squares correspond to survey sections. My task in this mental model, Using various tools, including the State of Texas’ GIS mapping tools, was to look for producing or shut-in wells, in the form of dots for vertical, or lines (toothpicks) for horizontal which intersected any of “my” sections (those for which I held mineral rights). If a dot or toothpick did intersect on of my squares, then I’d check the operator, try to contact there owner-relations department and perhaps ultimately a division order analyst to see whether my late mother was entitled to any royalties under some existing lease there (or even whether she already had an account). If so, then I’d work with them towards a transfer order. This was under the assumption that if a horizontal well passed under one of “my” sections, then I’d probably be entitled to royalties under some lease. Under this model, I could at least look up the lease ID associated to the wells that I’d find, and maybe somehow get a hold of them.
I actually started my research on some inherited section-rights in Glasscock county. My original mental model got disrupted when I found that I had rights in some sections that weren’t producing but that were tracts in a unitized lease there. Fortunately, a Division Order Analyst at Apache was able to provide me with an Appendix from the lease which described the tracts/units. This was of great help in decoding and verifying some of my holdings in those sections. I refined my mental model to the point where the question became: “How do I find existing leases that involve “my” sections?” (including pooled or unitized leases)
Is this a reasonable way of looking at the task ahead of me, or am I under some misconceptions or overlooking something? If it is reasonable, then my question to the forum is: Is there a way that I, on my own, might begin to discover leases, including pooling or unitization agreements, given my starting point of: GIS data, royalty statements, deeds for certain sections, property tax statements?