Inherited Oil Rights

I inherited mineral rights from my grandfather and I have no idea what to do I really know nothing about them. I have the location but don’t know how to look them up they are Township 2 North, Range 3 East of the Indian Base and Meridian 50 acres in Garvin county.

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Hi Kedrin,

Welcome to the forum! There are quite a few resources here you can find with the search, but basics would be making sure your documentation is in order and the county properly views the acreage as yours. That part of the process is out of my personal wheelhouse, but it involves making sure the will or probate is buttoned up and filed for all to know you own the acreage. Do you have any of this documentation?

Second, you can research the wells and activity in the area on the OCC website. If there are wells, you can contact the owner relations of those companies who operate the wells to transfer any royalty payments to your name. If not, it’s good to learn about the area: who’s drilling, what wells are being drilled, what reservoirs have produced, etc., just to be an informed owner. Like learning about the neighborhood if you just inherited a house. https://apps.occeweb.com/rbdmsweb_ok/occogonline.aspx

Finally, feel free to ask any specific questions here as we know it’s a lot to digest and understand! The more specific the question, the better our answers will be :slight_smile:.

Also, you’ll need to know the section number in addition to Township and Range. There are 36 sections in each township, which is further broken into parts with language like “NW4” (northwest quarter) or “SE2 NE4” (southeast half of the northeast quarter).

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Make sure that your contact information is correct with the county. This costs $1 per page to recover. Then there is the process of running down who has active wells on the site.

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I highly suggest holding them till oil goes up. Otherwise you will likely get majorly ripped off.

Hi Kedrin,

Think of looking at the county records as putting together a family tree for the minerals. To show ownership, then you need the title work to show how it passes from your grandfather to yourself or whoever the current owners under the law may be. This may require a probate, Affidavit of Heirship or some other title work. You want to show the “chain-of-title” which simply means the document that passes the property from one owner, to the next owner, to the next owner, etc. If you cannot do that, then you have a gap in the chain that will need to be corrected.

You can look in okcountyrecords.com to see what documents come up under your families name. You can also search unclaimed properties in Oklahoma, Delaware or state of last known address to see if funds were ever sent to the state under your relatives names. The Oklahoma Corporation Commision (OCC) also has a wealth of information along with an unlocated Mineral Owners Escrow Account that you can search under.

Good luck on your search~

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Welcome. I think you’re going to get a lot of good information here and better than I can offer, but without more expert advice you can start with OKCountyrecords.com. I just Google Garvin county deed records and it comes up. You should be able to get quite a lot by just putting your grandfather’s full name in a search. You will also want to understand if there were any other owners between you and your grandfather and search under their names. If you can find the deeds by which the last owner took title, you can get legal descriptions and some idea of the acreage, but it may cost a few bucks to get the documents. If there are active leases you can look those up too, but I didn’t do that. My mother and aunt kept good records so there was really no mystery about it, but it shouldn’t be too hard to dig it up.

Hallo Tracy!

I m in the same position as Kendrin. I inherited mineral rights too. And I also have no idea! And i live permanently in Greece. So I have a lot of questions. You advise Kedrin to .*.research the wells and activity in the area on the OCC website. If there are wells, you can contact the owner relations of those companies who operate the wells to transfer any royalty payments to your name. If not, it’s good to learn about the area: who’s drilling, what wells are being drilled, what reservoirs have produced, etc.

Please explain me how that works. I can t understand the part that oil companies-if can t contact the oweners-can start drilling. What does that mean? And how bad is that for me?Now i was planning to take advantage of my mineral rights.Is that meaningless now??

A lot of questions…i know…

Thanks in advance

Mike

Hi Mike :slight_smile:

I’ll walk you through an example with Kedrin’s acreage as the subject.

  1. Kedrin didn’t mention which section she was in, so first I’ll look on OKCountyRecords for “Smith,Kedrin” in 2N 3E in Garvin County. I find this 2018 Trustee’s Deed which has a legal description of acreage. Ideally you’d gather everything you can find and do what @Warmheartsland suggest and make a “family tree” of sorts with the deeds to trace the minerals. But let’s pretend for this example this is everything we’re looking at and is the most recent document. https://okcountyrecords.com/document/watermarked/garvin/002239/0605/72089812/ image
  1. We have two parcels of land described:
  • the SE/4 of SE/4 = “the southeast quarter of the southeast quarter” = 640 acres in a section / 4 / 4 = 40 acres
  • the SE/4 of SW/4 of SE/4 = “the southeast quarter of the southwest quarter of the southeast quarter” = 640 / 4 / 4 / 4 = 10 acres

This looks like this on a map of Section 3 in 2N 3E Garvin County:

  1. So, now that we know where we are, let’s take a look at the OCC map to see what’s going on there. https://apps.occeweb.com/rbdmsweb_ok/occogonline.aspx

We turn up 14 well records. In Oklahoma, there’s a good chance you have an interest in any well in the section you own minerals, regardless of where in the section you own those minerals.

Nothing’s showing up on the map though, so looking at the well documents, it seems nothing is producing. All of these wells look to have been drilled in the 1950’s and 1960’s, meaning they never made it into the online maps and other such records yet. But you can still pull the well documents and put them in your file.

If there were producing wells, you’d see a different “Status” and there’d probably be production under the production tab. In this case, you’d want to look up the operator listed and send them an email saying you’ve recently inherited minerals, that you think you have an interest in these specific wells, and ask nicely what you need to provide them to get the royalties switched to your name.

This is all assuming everything is settled on the legal side, btw.

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Additionally, I’m not fully following parts of your question, but if an oil company has NOT yet drilled a well and they’d like to on your acreage, they will find you if all of your documents are properly filed at the county courthouse. They have teams of people who will contact all the mineral owners where they want to drill, lease the acreage from the mineral owners, and get a permit to drill. If they never find you for whatever reason, your acreage is “pooled” with certain set terms but you still will get paid an average royalty, but it will sit on a shelf until they know where to send it and have the right documents to prove it. There’s more to it than that, but that’s the basics.

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Tracy you are absolutely great!! Thanks for being so helpful.You are all kind and willing to help!Thank you guys!!

What section are you in? Parts of Garvin are prolific and parts are not. If you share the complete description, then we can help with whether or not you have had wells in the past or now and whether they are still producing. If producing, then you can also contact the operator and see if they are holding funds for you or they have been turned over to the state treasurer.

Hallo again township six section 30 the northeast quarter

I should contact with the owners or maybe an attorney is better?

You are missing part of the description. It should be something like 30-2N-3E. You need the section, the township (N or S) and Range (E or W) .

Also, if you are a Greek citizen, then you may have trouble getting the title put into your name. My understanding is that only US citizens may own mineral rights, but I am not an attorney.

Complete the description and if it is in the far east part of Garvin, it may not be worth your time or trouble due to the geology.

oh you are right

30-6N-11E Is it ok?

Getting there. Which county? Texas County or Hughes County? There are two central meridians in OK. One is called the Indian Meridian and the other is called the Cimarron Meridian.

if you are in Hughes County in the NE quarter of 30, there was a well back in 2/98-10/90. It only produced a tiny bit of gas, so not worth the effort.

There is another well in the NE quarter that is still online, but your acreage does not appear to be in the spacing unit of the well, so no royalties to worry about.

Cleveland county NE/4 of section 30-6N-1E Cleveland County, Oklahoma. Noah Area C-24 Tract 30-A

my mistake…

or just 30-6N-1E Cleveland County, Oklahoma

i m not sure what the rest are

Ah then ignore the previous one where you typed in 11E.

30-6N-1E The only wells in that section are in the southern half of the section. The last two wells had last production in 2018, but you would not have had royalties from them anyway due to the spacing.

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My inherited mineral rights are SE/4 of SE/4 and the SE/4 of SW/4 of SE/4 Sevtion 3, Township 2 North, Range 3 East of the Indian Base and Meridian containing 50 acres more or less of Garvin County Oklahoma. Can anyone help me please. I know nothing about mineral rights or the first thing to do. I’d really appreciate it. Thank you