My siblings and I just inherited some mineral rights in Campbell County. I’m a total newbie to all of this, so please feel free to correct me on my terminology.
The acreage is in the Hartzog and Hartzog Draw sections. We get about $100/mo from Denbury and about $30/mo from 88Oil. So it’s not big bucks.
I’m trying to get some information to decide whether we ought to just sell, or whether we should hold on to it. Does anyone have suggestions on how I can start to get this information? Especially so that we don’t get low balled? Thanks for any help that you can give. Thanks.
Welcome to the oil and gas business and to the forum!
Do not do anything until you get very familiar with what you have, what is producing now and what the future potential may be.
For starters, read the Mineral Help tab above. Read all the last year’s posts in the forum for your county and the ones around you. That will get you caught up to date on what is happening.
It has been a tough past year in the oil patch due to COVID drop in demand. Prices are down, so some folks would not want to sell until prices come back up. Others may have a different opinion.
Read the oil and gas news for your area in newspapers, online sources, etc. Read up about your operator and others in the area on their websites. Get familiar with the Wyoming oil and gas commission website. Make sure that your names, address and descriptions of the minerals are filed in the county courthouse. If you just inherited, condolences on your loss. Hopefully the probate attorney has already filed everything properly. Did the probate put a value on the acreage?
Find out if you have more than one possible reservoir that might be drilled in the future.
Thank you very much for your feedback. All of the paperwork has been submitted, and we have put the everything into a trust. We are only getting about $200/mo on royalties, and my concern has been wondering whether it is worth the effort to keep them. So I started looking to see if I could find out about selling them.
But your advice is sound. I think that we need to understand what we have first and not rush into this. Do you think that it would be worth contact one of the people who have given us offers more as a ‘learning’ experience? Or would that just be too much hassle? Thanks again for your response.
I do not have minerals in Wyoming, so don’t know what is current. With COVID last year, drilling just screamed to a halt or almost halt all across the country. It is slowly picking up. Do some research on the operators near your acreage. You can also contact the NARO Rockies chapter to talk to some of the knowledgeable people and get some more resources. The main website is www.naro-us.org.
In a general sense, I am getting offers now in other states, but they are relatively lowball fishing mass mailings. We did have all of our properties appraised, so know what to expect giving room for a small profit for the buyer. We are holding tight right now.
Not knowing your exact location, I just did a quick check of the Wyoming oil & gas commission web site & see that the Hartzog Draw area is a “stacked play” area. This means that there are several formations at different depths that may be productive. I checked Denbury’s drill permits since you mentioned them and they have a lot of permit applications for wells in several different formations in that general area. As M Barnes advised, do become familiar with the wogcc.wyo.gov website and especially look at Denbury under the Permits tab. (There are other companies with permits in that area also.) Whether or not they might actually drill something on your mineral acres you can tell that they’ve done the geological work to be pretty sure there is oil in these formations (& likely a little gas). Before you look up information on the website it will be helpful if you have the exact legal description of your mineral acres (section, township & range). Good luck.
Thank you. They are actually drilling right now, and there is some oil and gas being extracted. Our fractional piece is small. I’ll continue to try and get more educated on this.