Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Mac Davis on July 30, 2009 at 21:21

What township/range/section?

Are they surface owners? If not, when did they sell the land?

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Permalink Reply by Bobi Carr ("parker") on July 30, 2009 at 23:33

Scott,

You need to go to the Department of Conservation and find out if the 2 wells are within a unit and whether their property is within said unit.

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Permalink Reply by Tar Heel on July 31, 2009 at 1:45

I know that the wells are not part of a unit.

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Permalink Reply by Tar Heel on July 31, 2009 at 1:46

They are not surface owners. The land was sold ages ago. The 1960s or before, I think.
They did not own the surface when the well on their land stopped producing.

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Permalink Reply by Bobi Carr ("parker") on July 31, 2009 at 8:27

Scott,

Is the property in Louisiana or Texas?

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Permalink Reply by Dion Warr, CPL on July 31, 2009 at 10:21

Scott:

If these wells are in LA, the S-T-R location would be helpful for the appropriate field order research.

It is rare for wells completed below the Travis Peak formation to not be unitized, especially post-1970.

Wells from below that depth would almost certainly be draining from an area of greater than 10 acres, but without a lessee to make demand to drill an offset well, it would be up to you (the mineral owner) to prove drainage (something that most mineral owners would be hard pressed to do without tangible evidence from an expert source, e.g., geologist, geophysicist, etc.)

As long as these wells are classified as lease wells, only the mineral owner / lessor is due to receive royalties. A unit would have to be formed around the well in order to implement force pooling of surrounding owners and their interests for proportionate shares of production to be allotted (either as net revenue or as royalty).

IANAL (I am not a lawyer), thus IMO without unitization, the mineral servitude established on your parent's land (by your question, I assume that mineral rights have been held by mineral servitude rather than by 'fee ownership', to the extent that such term applies in LA) would prescribe due to the passage of a period of greater than ten years of nonuse of the subject mineral servitude, either by the drilling of a well (or wells) establishing good-faith attempt(s) at production on the burden tract (the 150 acres) or on lands pooled therewith (based upon your current information, this condition is not applicable).

To the extent that a portion of the land was included in such a unit, the mineral servitude would be interrupted by such good-faith attempt at production, operations, or production.

Even if a unit was established by LOC at this time, the field order would only pool the mineral ownership and related interests from the effective date of the order, and thus would likely be ineffectual as to holding to your parent's mineral servitude.

A complete vetting of the facts (starting with the location of the property, and going from there) would greatly assist in being able to shoring up these preliminary conclusions.

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Permalink Reply by Tar Heel on July 31, 2009 at 11:13

This land is in DeSoto Parish, Louisiana. S15-T12N-R12W.

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Permalink Reply by Two Dogs, Pirate on August 1, 2009 at 8:38

You need to hire someone like Skip Peal or an O&G attorney to research this matter. From a cursory search I feel that you may still own minerals on this tract.

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