Charles is correct. I guess I was not thinking it through. Every time I have been asked to get permission for seismic I was asked to contact the surface owner. A few years ago my dad was contacted on a farm he owns but does not have mineral rights. After reading Charles response I realized that in each of those cases there were either leases taken in the section or we were leasing the surface owner at the same time.
I asked someone this morning exactly what the requirements here in Oklahoma are. I was told that they just have to have permission from any undivided mineral owner and a current OGL counts as permission. I was also told that there have been a couple of suits where no mineral owner was contacted, the company shot seismic and it did not look good. Those mineral owners successfully sued saying their minerals were condemned when the company had no right to explore in the first place. That is a situation I had not considered.