Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by 1kw6x71km1v37 on September 15, 2014 at 12:49

Guess I was off a little bit.

I get that a lot.

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Permalink Reply by Michael D Long on September 16, 2014 at 11:08

FYI - I worked on this survey revision & yes it did shrink from the original size. We questioned the surveyors about the reduction, but to no avail. Once it's stamped & made official, it becomes gospel.

Surveyors are an interesting breed & operate by a strict code that they do not deter from. Unfortunately, this can work against a land owner who thought they owned one amount of acreage, but can also acually increase your area in other cases. What I find interesting is a situation where there are specific calls that caluclate to a total in the deed history, but then the survey shows it to be off by some amount (i.e. deed calculates to 1.01 acres, but the survey measures 0.99).

Another clue that a final unit survey is being used in a DO, is that the acreages only go out to 3 decimal places as seen in the question above.

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Permalink Reply by 1kw6x71km1v37 on September 16, 2014 at 13:33

Frequently, a new corner set by a registered surveyor will not check with the actual corner in use. I understand that in Texas, the old corner would be recognized by the meets and bounds system. I am not sure what the policy in Louisiana to recognize existing old corners, but if you have held property for 27 years or more over the line, it's yours by adverse possession with a legal bill attached.  Keep in mind that many surveys are done today with GPS instruments.They are not always the most accurate in my experience, being easily influenced by weather condition, satellite position and tree canopy if there is one. Things generally gets worse in the afternoon. I'm sure there have been some improvements since I last dealt with GPS equipment in 2008. One of the accuracy problems then was due to the fact the Dept. of Defense would not permit hookup with an additional satellite that DOD used to get pin-point results.

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Permalink Reply by Steve P on October 18, 2014 at 7:50

when a new survey is performed, and the unit size changes, does the operator go back and ensure that the total acreage of all the tracks in the unit add up to the section size?    In other words, if I own 10 acres, and let's assume for discussion that they unit is a perfect 640 acrs, my unit interest would be 10/640X .25 (my royalty).  at the end of the calculations, the operator should total up all of the tracks in the unit, and they should be 640/640   If the unit size is adjusted for a new survey, then the "size" of the individual tracks would need to be adjusted.  If an owner has a metes and bounds description, we should assume that this doesn't change.  So, the adjustments would be for those owners whose description is not metes and bounds, such as the NW/4 of the NW/4 of the NW/4 for my 10 acres.  And, of course, practice from years ago was to add, more or less, to such descriptions because they aren't based on metes and bounds.

My recollection from 30 years ago was that any adjustments in unit size were resolved for those quarter-quarter sections along the N and W sides of the Section.  Have any of you heard of this?

so, I have 2 questions - if the unit size is adjusted, can I be assured that the operator has taken proper adjustments to ALL of the tracks in the unit?  And, if I own 10 acres, if the new survey goes from 640 acres to 638 acres, wouldn't my interest increase (smaller denominator) or would the smaller unit size be taken from the north and west sides of the unit?

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Permalink Reply by Skip Peel - Mineral Consultant on October 18, 2014 at 7:58

A unit survey includes the survey of each tract contained within the unit boundary.  Mistakes in metes and bounds legal descriptions are quite common.  The unit operator will file a copy of the survey in the public record. 

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Permalink Reply by Skip Peel - Mineral Consultant on October 19, 2014 at 5:26

Here is the survey plat filed in Caddo Parish Public Records for the Anadarko HA RA SUM Unit in the Dixie Field.

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