Just an FYI, if you don't have a clear title for the rights in your name. In other words, maybe you inherited them from a family member and ownership was never formally transferred to you either by a Probate or a will, you could run into problems when it comes down to it. That's the part nobody wants to tell you when they are throwing money at you. It's pretty annoying really, I think the hope by most of these guys trying to buy stuff is the less the mineral rights owner knows, the better and sometimes they get lucky by lowballing AND actually getting somebody who owns title to the rights. In many cases the transfer of ownership is so old, the records are very difficult to locate so if you don't know what you're looking for, it can be tough. For the oil/gas companies leasing the land, they are good with a death certificate but to actually sell and transfer ownership, you need a probate.
Roger are they all leased and do you need to sale all of them?
My mother in law has had her royalty in 34, 29, and 16 in 2n,4w for at least 55 years. She raised four kids as a single mom and no assistance from the government or child support. It was a horribly rough several years on her and the kids and a few times she could have sold her royalty for maybe enough to buy groceries for a few weeks or so but she hung on to it. She leased it out a few times and they even drilled a well on 34 once. It came in at 70 bbls. of oil a day and made the front page of the Duncan Banner as a great well but she never got hardly anything off of it (she owns about 29 acres in that section) because oil was at about $5.00 a bbl.. They plugged it shortly after getting it on production. We don't know whether they ruined the well or what.
She still hung on to the royalty and for years never leased it out again. Hardly no other wells were drilled down there even during the oil boom when all this drilling was going on around Lindsay and down at Velma. Now it's all in the middle of what Newfield and Continental are calling the "SWEET SPOT" of the Cana Woodford Shale! They have drilled "The Branch" on 16 which is an excellent well! She has been offered all the way up to $6,000 an acre now for it and she has decided not to sell because she'd have to pay a lot for taxes and she wants her kids to eventually get it! But she's 92 years old and we're hoping she lives long enough to get to spend some of it. Not everyone has that long to wait for their money and as many of you have said "everyone's case is different" so you just have to do what you have to do and we wish you the best with whatever you decide!
My husband and I bought his cousin's royalty in the same sections when we were in college and first married about 43 years ago and we're very excited about the new well and the prospect of drilling more and have had the same offers as his mother to purchase it since all this new drilling is going on. But no one ever offered until then or we might have sold it because we didn't think it would ever be worth anything until they started all this horizonal drilling and oil hit around $90-$100. a bbl. I'm glad now that no one offer to buy it back then!
If you need to sell you could always do like I do when I buy a house. Make them an offer that you think is more than they would possibly take and sometimes we've been suprised because that will take it! If not, they can always make a counter offer. It never hurts to try for more. When we bought our office building the lady had been asking $115,000 for it and my husband offered $50,000 and she took it!! Good Luck!!