My family has owned mineral and gas rights in two counties in OK for 8 generations. My grandmother would be passing these rights onto me, but she has lost track over time and doesn’t know where to start. She currently receives checks from Mach, Tee Ray Resources, and in the past has received checks from New Dominion, Paloma, Newfield. I believe she should now be receiving checks from Ovintiv or Encanta. I was looking into signing up for Energy Link but only have about half of the info needed to get signed up there. Honestly, she’s left me a mess and I don’t know where to start other than putting in a change of address form in the two counties we own in. I also don’t have the time to learn and do all of this myself as I have been trying to learn and it’s been tough to figure out. Is there someone in OK that anyone can recommend that I can talk to about straightening this out?
Matt Sands, the NARO National President has a course you can take online at mineral rights podcast. It’s a little pricey, but if you are really new to all this, it can help you immensely. From learning the very basics of understanding the different types of interests, and how those interests are calculated, to running your own chain of title search, and searching for missing funds, it can really trim down the learning curve.
Any landman/mineral manager who is familiar with OK can help you. There are providers in the MRF directory.
FWIW, with only two counties and a few operators, you may be able to handle it yourself. The address change with the county will not help much, as the operators are not obligated to monitor those. I would start with emailing any operator you feel is involved with as much data as you have (how it was/is owned, old revenue data, well names, etc) and request copies of recent revenue statements (to get in EnergyLink) and request and monies in suspense. You can also go to https://okcountyrecords.com and search for your family names. Keep the deeds and make a list of the legal descriptions and how much was owned. This will give you a good starting point to identify the assets, but not required. Please do reach out for help, there is a wealth of support in the forum. NARO is another great resource.
You are in the right place to ask. Start with the checks that you have. Keep those statements for seven years for IRS purposes. The check stub will have the name and address of the paying company, the name of the well or property, the decimal amount of the royalty payment and if you are lucky, the county and the API number.
Then start an Excel or other type of spreadsheet and start filling in the information.
Here is a template that you might find useful. You can more columns that make sense to you. I put in an example.
_Composite Master Tract list template.xlsx (56.9 KB)
If you have questions about a particular county, post them in the county. Be sure and put your section, township and range in the body of the message. (See the Counties tab above.)
Do not post any personal information such as emails or phone numbers.
Newfield is now Ovintiv, so you do need to inform any operators of any change in address. Get as many files as you can from your grandmother and scan them.
Make sure she puts the mineral rights in her estate plan so that they do properly pass to whomever she wants them to go to.
It wasn’t clear from you post whether your grandmother is still living. If she is, then she should incorporate the minerals into her estate plan. If she has passed then whether probate is needed depends on the planning she has already done.
Keep all the records possible from companies currently paying. Also hang on to tax returns as these can provide clues to other minerals that may have quit paying.
This post is not legal, tax or investment advice. Reading or responding to this post does not create an attorney/client relationship.
Thank you for your help, I very much appreciate it. I did create a spreadsheet with the owner numbers and other information from the companies that we’ve received payments from in the past. We have a will and are creating a trust, but feeding the trust is difficult because she’s lost track of the companies. I will reach out to Ovintiv because I believe this is where much of the confusion lives.