Was contacted concerning a lease or purchase offer for the royalty for the above acreage. Did not even know that we owned the rights. Purchase offer seems low. $5000. Is this an active area? How do we find a person who can assist us with this? Am inclined to lease. Thank you for any advice.
Uh, very low. My cousin's property exactly one mile away from you in 265, leased for 3000 a nma, a nominal mineral acre, three years ago and was extended this year for 12,000 an acre.
They keep finding more deposit levels of oil in this area, now at eight going on eleven, meaning layers of petroleum or gas holding rock that can be fractured for extraction.
Get a lawyer now. The sections 266 and 265 of Block 13 were part of a land scandal that conned the Methodist University, the Toyah Valley Grape and Alfalfa Development, so those sections are composed of many small holdings, from five acres or so on up. The soil is fertile if watered and there were many small truck farms started there. This in the first two decades of the 1900's.
Anyway, because the ownership was so fragmented, and the mineral rights were conveyed because the water rights were conveyed with the land purchases, Sections 266 and 265 were hard to assemble into lease drilling blocks, especially given how the ownership would fragment with the passing of each generation. The surface rights later would often become separate from the mineral rights, the mineral rights passing on in ownership to the heirs of the original purchasers unless specifically sold.
The area is in an overpressure zone and because of the many zones, horizons, levels of petroleum bearing strata underneath the surface, it is like owning seven to ten times the surface acres of any other oilfield.
Get a lawyer. Check out this site. Several lawyer referrals by other members are posted.
If at all possible, lease, do not sell. This property will produce revenue for decades. Perhaps not a lot of money in one go, but a fortune over the long haul.
Good Luck.
Lynn Wood
Hey, We are in 266..... same story my great great grandfather bought these parcels in 1910, he was a Methodist Minister. Anyway I can give you some info should you like. Inbox me anytime!
I’m looking for information on the Toyah Grape and Alfalfa Co Subdivision. Was this a scam or did the Company actually have land which was legitimately sold to buyers.
Ah,a lot of interesting history there. My great grandfather who was a Methodist minister purchased 20 acres about 1910-1913. One of my co workers some twelve years or so back, who was a well read history buff explained how a great land swindle wrecked the finances of Southern Methodist University before 1920. I wish I had taken notes.
The land is fertile when watered but water is the key there. Actual land was sold and since at that time the water rights were conveyed with the land, so were the mineral rights . Anyway, the result today is several 640 acre sections broken into 5 to 20 acre plots because of the Toyah Valley Grape…etc development.
The result is small mineral rights holdings that are difficult to assemble into drilling blocks because of the number of persons having rights to the properties some four or five generations along now and the small size of the properties limiting the worth of the return on expensive extensive investigation to locate the heirs entitled to mineral rights.
The area involves a lot more work to obtain the lease rights than most of the other areas of Reeves County.
That is very interesting history. I am one of those 4th generation owners and I always wondered how great grandpa got the notion to buy TX property when we live 1,000 miles away in Missouri. Thanks for some insight into the history.
Hi have been offered 30,000 per acre for section 266 to purchase, was leased in 2018 for 13,000 per acre and I am on the fence about this. It is in block 13. Can’t tell from maps I pulled up any detail on wells. Any help would be appreciated.
This is a correction to block 8 and not 13