Gas well drilled in 2006 have yet to receive royalty check

Hi,

From eagleford forum suggested I post this on this forum too...

My uncle has land in East Texas and has one gas well on his land since 2006.  This well was the second drilled of  a  6 well unit, other wells came between 2007-2008. The well on his land has produced 550,000 MCF (I have the API and lease # to verify) since January 2006 - Nov 2013. I've used the average monthly wellhead price and see that this is roughly $3,000,000 in gas sales (not including condensate that it also produces but I didn't bother calculating).

My question is, if my uncle never signed a lease with anyone, how can this be? My aunt who held the land back in the 70s signed one lease in 1975 and another with a different company in 1980 but no well was drilled by either of those two companies but this 3rd company drilled a well in 2005/2006.

The well now is probably HBP because has only been producing less than 4,000 MCF per month over the last 3 years (currently around 2,000 MCF).

My question is, would this dollar amount ($3M gross) be worth getting a lawyer for? I know that unk will get nowhere near the $3M after all these percentages and post-production fees but I'm wondering how much a lawyer or a landman would cost to resolve something like this.

Here are some bits that others on Eagle Ford asked me for that I will share here:

1. my uncle still owns the land and it has been in the family since sovereignty. i have all title transactions since sovereignty from titlex.com

2. uncle is all paid up on his taxes and never pays late. i checked the county commissioners site to verify.

3. the gas pad is smack dab in the middle of my uncles land and takes up a few acres.

4. uncle has never moved houses for over 30 years so he is not hard to find. he gets all mail that is sent to him just fine. they have had the same phone number at that house since the 1960s i suppose (or whenever they changed over to the 7 digit phone number system).

Thanks.

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Dee, I would be happy to take a look at this for you. 

In Texas, it is not uncommon for a mineral interest owner to be an "unleased royalty owner."  The operator typically does not permit this with large interests, and the effective penalty to the operator can be quite stiff.  In this case, the mineral owner is treated like a covered working interest.  Once the well costs have been recouped by the operator, the unleased royalty owner receives his full share of production.  So assume the minerals are 30% of the unit, and no lease is signed, the owner would receive 30% of production after well payout, instead of 30% times a royalty rate with first production.

I hope to be an unleased royalty owner in Texas some day!

here's a picture of the drillsite that is smack dab in the middle of his property

there also seems to be a collector of some type on the far right side of the picture

http://postimg.org/image/61o47h7tv/

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