My grandfather purchased two separate deeds for the same property from two different grantors in Winkler County, TX. Deed 1 was filed in March 1929 and Deed 2 was also filed on March 1929 but on a different date. Both deeds indicate 1/512 of royalties on Section 4, Block B-5\ PSL and reference the same lease agreement already in place at the time. I have not been able to get a copy of the lease referenced in the deeds. My division order does list my small decimal interest and the property involved but I can’t resolve how my decimal interest was calculated.
Who should be able to validate that my royalty check includes both deed interests? Right now the carrier/accountant says they pay what the operator tells them and they referred me to the operator. The operator says he can’t verify my percentage and referred me to the carrier/accountant (there has been a long string of operators). I’m feeling like a “blip bird” . . . a bird that flies with ever increasing velocity into ever decreasing concentric circles until finally, it goes “BLIP” right up its own behind.
The well is a very old well and its current production and payments are quite small. It seems to me resolving this would likely not worth hiring an attorney. But it is bugging me that I can’t find the answer to this.
Can’t answer the title question part, but the decimal for a very old well like that is likely to be “net acres/spacing acres x royalty”. Likely that the royalty is 1/8th or 0.125. You could try 1/80 x .125 and see if it matches. That would be for an oil well at 80 ac spacing and 1/8th royalty at one acre. Look up the permit of the well on the RCC and see if the spacing is listed. If one acre does not match then try two acres. If 1/8th royalty doesn’t match, then try 3/16ths which is 0.1875. Sometimes, you just have to try a few combinations.
Are the deeds identical or are there two different grantors? The wording of the deed might give more context. It could have been one acre out of 512 acres or it could have been a different set of math.
The grantors of both deeds are the same. But the signing dates on one is 2/11/1920 and the other is 2/25/1929. Both deeds were recorded 3/21/1929 sequentially in the Winkler county deed books: VOL 35 and pages 598-599 and 600-601.
On the RRC docs I see the total lease is 640 acres and I do see “Acres in Unit” listed as 20. This is what I was missing! 20 / 640 = 0.03125. This multiplied by (1/512)*(1/8)2 deeds(20/640) is what my division order says! So it looks like their division order is correct and my dreams are dashed!!!
Thank you Martha!! I did not understand the spacing factor!!