O.K. guys and gals. I have a friend that ran a scenario by me that I need your help on. You
know I dont like to admit that I dont know something so please be gentle. I know we have covered some of this before but just humor me. There is a method to my madness. This isnt a trick question and any comments will be greatly appreciated.
Here goes.....................

I am going to buy a piece of property consisting of 10 acres. I agree to purchase said property with 50% of the minerals being retained by the current owner. I will get the other 50%.

Lets say ole Snake gets a well drilled just as soon as he buys the property. Some cats out of Houston jack up the frac and ruin my well.( just kidin' Houston ) We have to cap the well without ever receiving any royalty whatsoever.

Time moves ever so slowly forward.5 1/2 years pass by and I find someone else willing to give me a lease. I am now, through the magic of HS, at the end of said lease.I have now owned the land for 10+ years. I have never received any royalty whatsoever.


In the State of Louisiana......Is there any reason in the world that I would not now own 100% of my minerals ?

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IT needs to be said, that unitization effects a mineral servitude diffrently if the unit well is inside or outside of the servitude.

If part of a tract is unitized, and the unit well is not on the tract with the mineral servitude, only the part of the tract in the unit will have an interuption in prescription. But...with the same senario where only part of a tract is in the unit, but a unit well is on the tract, prescription is interupted for the WHOLE tract.
Mr. Snake:

Politicians always tend to make things too wordy and use too much legalese language. The scenario set out in your original question supposes that Company X drilled a dry hole on acreage that you own which is burdened by an existing servitude. This well was drilled while the servitude was still in effect. The legal definations provided by Mr. KB can be explained in the following layman's terms.

Assuming that Company X's drilling operations were conducted with the utmost of honorable intentions, then the mineral servitude that burdends your acreage would be interrupted the minute that the bit touched the surface of the earth. This would be the date of interruption and the servitude clock would stop ticking on this date. (For this scenario lets use a date of January 1st)

Company X continues good faith drilling operations for the next several months. They reach their target depth on October 30th of the same year but find no commercial production (sorry Snake) and cease all drilling operations on this date. They then begin the process of rigging down. October 30th would then be the date that one would use for determining the commencement of the running of prescription and the owner of the mineral servitude that burdens your acreage would receive a new ten years in which to explore his minerals.

The date for the cessation of operations is not normally found on SONRIS or SONRIS Lite. One would have to review the well file for that particular well to find out this date.
Wilmer S:

Very well stated. Thanks for the "layman's" explanation.
exactly. Also..as I stated above it is important to see how the tract falls into the unit boundries.
And the unit may not show up by searching S-T-R on Sonris Lite.
It may take some digging, but all the unit orders will be in the black book index on SONRIS, The orders themselves are scaned in. DO NOT TRUST the HA unit overlay on the gis maps.
I'm still working on understanding this.

Where on Sonris?
YOu can get the P&A date from SONRIS. This would be the best date to use.
Thanks Mr. Sparks.
To clarify an earlier argument, reworking does interupt prescription.
Also a shut in well proved capable of producing in paying quanities by production test will interupt prescription,

the interuption date in this case is the date of the production test.
What about those situations where minerals are HBP where one has included several pieces of property in one lease, not necessarily adjoining each other? Like one leased without a horizontal pugh clause or what ever it's called? Say property which is located miles from each other. Couldn't one strategically use that maintain possession of mineral rights past any prescription if only one well was drilled on the lease at one location?
Wasn't it Kassie who was caught up in something like that?

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