Hello all, I have been trying to track down some leases that were supposedly inherited by myself and siblings some years back. I am still trying to navigate the mine field of the Oil and Gas industry and finding info has been a daunting task to say the least. Any help with this would be much appreciated.
Township 17 South, Range 32 East, N.M.P.M. Section 1 :All Section 2: NE/4; N/2 NW/4
Thank you in advance, Michael
Michael, looks to me like these minerals are NM State Lands and have been HBP since the 1930’s. 1281.72 total acres on the lease covering all of Section 1 & 2 of 17S-R32E. Could be that you own an ORRI under those tracts though.
Possible that this is filed in Lea? Yes it’s possible. Also quite possible that it was not filed in County and the vesting ORRI is filed only in NM SLO in Santa Fe and would have to check those records (or get abstract of those records PDF’d) to find it.
Hopefully you have some kind of paperwork about the interest inherited or names of the people who you inherited from along with approximate dates and at least you have something to work with.
EastTxPermian, Thank you for the response. I have a few more questions now if you don’t mind. Some of your terminology is foreign to me. I think that SLO is State land office? Not sure of HBP?
As far as paperwork I have a copy of the trust doc with the info as well as a copy of the actual filed deed in Lea County Clerks Office Again many thanks, Michael
I tried to reply with information, however, my posts were never approved and it has been 2 days.
Okay Thank you. 
I am now trying to get more info.
I have talked with the County Clerks office and they have been a big help. Now to negotiate the other offices to find more info.
Again Many Thanks,
Mike
Oh I forgot to say, SLO is showing ConocoPhillips as the Lessee, but its still possible that your relatives owned Operating Rights (WI) in that and not ORRI. More likely it is ORRI, but you never know until you find it.
Bottom line: To get an accurate picture of what is owned, you will need
I am never one to try to make some more complex than it is, but because it it State Lands, means you can’t rely only on what you will find in Lea County. Has to be run in both places.
Yes, the SLO is the New Mexico State Lands Office. I quickly put your legal description into SLO data portal - welcome click on Land Details tab and put in your legal description and it will take you to a page that shows the oil and gas lease data. Here you can see that the State of NM owns all of the minerals under Sections 1 and 2 of 17S-R32E. Now it happens that it is all under the same OGL - Lease Number: B0-3610-0000, but there could have been more than one State OGL for the tracts. If some of the tracts had been USA/BLM or Fee (private) then they would have not shown up here on the SLO website. So this is all on 1 lease, issue date 12/10/1934 covering 1281.72 total acres (all of Sections 1 & 2 of 17S-R32E). HBP means “held by production” which means the OGL currently has active well(s) right now. This is why the SLO lists it as in Extended Primary Term even though the lease was for 10 years from 1934 (the primary term).
To make it easy, does the paperwork from the Trust doc filed in Lea say exactly what they think they own? If it does, lets just assume that it is correct, whether or not it is. If you assume that the person who created the Trust owned whatever they said they own and you are one of the beneficiaries and you haven’t sold anything, then maybe that’s what you own. Perhaps you are satisfied with this, and if someone wants to buy it, then let them worry about the title work.
OTOH, if the Trust doc just lists a legal description and you have no idea about it, or you really want to know what you own accurately, that is when you should get a copy of the State Lands Office abstract - the whole file for Lease Number: B0-3610-0000. This way you can see all Transfers, Assignments, Reservations of overriding royalty (ORRI), etc. There may be multiple owners of different strata (oil and gas zones underground) and you may own in some but not others. Unfortunate, when dealing with State/BLM lands, sometimes they file them at Santa Fe AND at the County (Lea) and sometimes its either/or. It sucks but the record is incomplete without checking both.
Hi Mikro, HBP stands for “Held By Production” since once a well starts producing, the leases stay in effect until production stops. The areas you were interested in have four active wells all operated by Penroc Oil company. You can view this on the New Mexico Oil & Gas GIS map: https://nm-emnrd.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=4d017f2306164de29fd2fb9f8f35ca75
I want to thank you both for your info. It has been of great assistance. After contacting the Lea County Clerks office and I received more info, I was also directed to the SLO and the Energy and Mineral State treasure departments. They are currently working on getting docs for me. It appears at this time it did not get transferred properly from one trust to another, when one bank bought out the other. It most likely went into default of taxes due to no transfer of deed from one trust account and name to the other during an 11 year period. That now becomes a new issue for myself and siblings. We now have major questions for the bank and there possible failure of this. Again many thanks, MK
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