Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by The_Baron on April 16, 2012 at 4:41

sure its possible.

 

Just look at Exxons servitude in Morehouse.

Permalink Reply by Big McInnes on April 16, 2012 at 6:51

What the baron is trying to say is that sometimes when companies have played their cards just right they can hold 40,000 acres at a time by drilling 1 well every 10 years. If your family owned 100,000 acres that was completely contiguous, meaning there was no state roads or old creeks running through the property and it was all one big block, then your family sold the minerals to a third party owned by themselves (such as a family business). Shortly thereafter they would start selling off the property piece by piece to farmers/landowners, reserving their minerals. If your family was wealthy enough, they could drill 1 well anywear on the 100,000 acres servitude they created when they sold the minerals to the family business every 9 years and 11 months, thus interupting prescription and making it start over FOR THE ENTIRE 100,000 NMA. These are known in oil gas to be servitude wells, but the company must make a "Good Faith" attempt to recover natural resources with each well. Easy to fake if there is a shallow gas formation somewhere in the near viscinity. People like humble oil refinery, Exxon, XTO, carter oil and gas, and monterry oil and gas or just a bunch of cousins passing property and minerals back and forth creating their own servitudes.

What happens is even after your family has sold the property, your hiers still have the right to drill on any piece of property located within the servitude without paying the landowner if they decided not to. Louisiana law states, if someones surface servitude hinders you from reaping the benefits of your mineral servitude you have the right to go and get it (Lames terms- obviously). Although companies very seldomly decide not to pay the land owner damages for the surface because it is bad for the public relations of the company. In short 186 wells is more than enough to hold 575,000 acres if Devon is sitting on few of their own servitudes. Many landowners located within these servitudes do not even know they do not own their minerals, but they will find out if a play like the dense comes through and people start drilling on their land, without paying them royalties. This is unfortunately one of the dark sides of oil and gas, even landmen who have been doing this for many years can miss the tricky servitudes.

Permalink Reply by The_Baron on April 16, 2012 at 7:42

state highways or old creeks may not even matter.

 

The timber companies are reknown for creating large complicated servitudes as well.

Permalink Reply by Big McInnes on April 16, 2012 at 9:39

True, State Highways and Servitudes may lack the ability to interupt a servitude. It is just usually your best shot. One servitude I came across had a highway going through the center of it, but when we went back and ran all of the landowners who sold the R.O.W.'s to the State they reserved their minerals. In Louisiana when you reserve your minerals from a conveyance to the state you reserve them in perpetuity. These reservations kept this particular servitude in a contiguous block. If you are buying big acreage in LA, it is best to go to the courthouse and look the tract books to see if there has ever been a timber/oil company that owned the property. If you find this is the case higher somebody who knows what there doing to find out whether you will receive your minerals. If it is farm land, it is worth the time and money to protect the surface of your investment. if the property you are interested in is covered by a mineral servitude, it may be best to try and find a piece uncovered.

Permalink Reply by North LA on April 16, 2012 at 9:52

Interesting. Thank ya'll for sharing.

Permalink Reply by jed baker on April 16, 2012 at 19:38

On a old Humble/Monterey/Exxon servitude in Morehouse Pasrish would Hwy 2 break a contiguous land track. Drilling has been every 10yrs minus a couple of months .Some of the drill holes have been on one side of Hwy 2 and the other have been on the opposite side during the life of this servitude. Any ideas or help would be very much appreciated, thanks in advance.

 

Permalink Reply by Land Rat on April 17, 2012 at 2:34

No, the XTO servitude is not broken by Hwy 2.  Trust that XTO has very well-paid title attorneys who ensured this was the case before they drilled the wildcat well there recently.  I, for one, feel that these bad-faith efforts to hold servitudes under the guise of development run against the spirit of the law and I would applaud some case-law that made these operators have to step up their game.  In any case, if your land was ever owned by ANY of the companies that have been discussed in this thread, there's a chance you don't have your minerals.  This is especially true from lands form the AR border south 10-20 miles as this was land historically owned by large industrial corporations.

Permalink Reply by Andrew on September 24, 2013 at 20:39

If the highway divided the land before the minerals on either side were reserved, then the highway would still divide the tract and multiple Servitudes would be created (in this case three: one on each side of the hwy, plus one under the highway). It is a question of the circumstances on the date the minerals were severed - if a servitude is created on a contiguous tract of land, a later expropriation or sale to the state for a highway would not divide the servitude in two.

Permalink Reply by Land Rat on September 25, 2013 at 1:16

In any case, the geographic bounds of any particular servitude is going to depend on any number of things...the most important of which is an interruption to its contiguity. 

This can come in untold forms, but the most common of which would be...

navigable waterways, "ROWs" that are actually full "fee simple (to borrow a term from AR)" transfers...either HWY or RR, other property transfers that include the sale of minerals.

Moral of the story...you can't rely on generalizations about any of these things.  I have only heard rumors about this particular XOM situation and can't speak to the specifics of what the instruments creating the highway actually transferred, but I doubt XTO would have drilled the well on the south side of the highway if there was not a way to connect the minerals, uninterrupted, with those that lie north.

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