Question on mineral rights and gas lease. (home, association)

[swampdog2]

here is the way it works ! if you purchase property and there are no oil or gas wells in production on your property and you did not receive the mineral rights and no oil or gas wells are drilled and produced for 10 years then you receive all the mineral rights. now that being said , if there is an oil or gas well on the property and it is producing it will hold the rights for as long as it produces . that being said lets say the well goes down and stays down for 1 year then the lease expires and then your 10 years start unless the mineral owner leases it back to someone and they start producing the well again. remember just because the mineral owner has leased the minerals does not mean he locks it in , there has to be production continuously without interruption . so to make it simple if the lease has been in effect for 9 years without production then on the 10th birthday and still no production that baby belongs to you.

[roan]

I m new on this forum so please forgive me if I did not post my question correctly. I am trying to get help with an aggressive land man who says I can sign an oil lease for what he is offering or be left out of all the royalties and bonus payments all together. This is some undivided and never probated in a will property in Louisiana. He actually got 64 of the 70 heirs to sign for $10.00 each. Which to me was ridiculous. I am asking for, what after to talking to several people who have lease land in the last couple of years, is a fair price. Also another major oil company has a big producing well within 5 miles of this property. I need help but cannot afford a lawyer. Does anyone know anything about oil leasing in Louisiana?

[OldHole735]

I'm presently living in Georgia. Back in 1982 I leased the mineral rights to a .3122 acre lot in Slidell, Louisiana, to AMOCO Production Co. of Layfayette, Louisiana for 3 years. They indicated a Gas Well would be placed in the area of my lot in the near future. Nothing had happened for a while and I actually assumed nothing was going on while I was with the military all these years. I recently did a title search and found that AMOCO still has the lease attached to my property, yet they never contacted me to pay royalties or to pay the annual rental as per the lease. According to the lease, there must be marketable production going on in order to keep the lease in force all these years.

I don't see anything in the lease that prevent them from paying me back payments.

How do I find out as much as I can about the Well such as the exact placement of it, identification number, production amount, AMOCO point of contact, etc. ?

Do you all think this is a good case for a Landman to find out the details of what is happening?

How do I find an creditable and trustworthy Louisiana Landman certified by for example, a national organization?

Any help is appreciated...

[waitingtundra]

I guess we see how the perezes ended up with all those oil and gas royalties in southeast Louisiana,lol.

[BeenThereDunThat]

There are a number of Forums set up with this specific topic. Just do a simple search on subjects like Haynesville Shale and you'll see them pop up. As far as surface property owner / mineral rights go...there is something called:
The Rule of Prescription which in general means that if the surface owner of a property has no production activity for a period of 10 years, then the mineral rights are prescribed back to the surface owner. The definition of "production" does not mean that the production takes place on the specific property but in the section/ township / range which determines the area of production that the property may be a part of. A typical S/T/R is comprised of 640 sq acres of which a drilling unit is designated. If your acreage falls within a specified drilling unit... while it may not have any activity on your property.... it still can be considered an active participant in the unit.

There's all kinds of technicalities that can be involved. Bottomline is that if you need answers regarding your property / mineral rights, it is often money well-spent to get a qualified, experienced O&G attorney to look into such matters. It may be a few hundred or it may be a few thousand... only you can determine if it's worthwhile based on the size of your mineral interests. People with less than an acre might not see it worthwhile. Another route would be to do some homework on your own via public records, research specific forums regarding O&G leaseholder's rights. You could hire a qualified O&G landman as a consultant who could do some research and offer an observation based on his/her findings. Just remember that general opinions & observations may not apply in every case as the laws / regulations governing such matters can be quite technical and are often challenged. But the Rule of Prescription is basically after 10 yrs of no production, the minerals are prescribed to the surface rights owner.

Good luck!

[JanND]

This is a very helpful site it is geared to the mineral owners....It has specific links to the pages for the states involved w/ oil. Hope this helps. National Association of Royalty Owners. They have areas where you can ask and answer questions. Very helpful to me. NARO - Home
I've been researching all I can too.

[nancybmorrison]

Please ask your landsman if mineral rights, in Louisiana, include water, yet. Can water rights be contracted?

[audrasexton]

in Kentucky how long do I regain my mineral rights from a dry gas well

[audrasexton]

Can a gas company bypass a gas meter and at the well and have it read out at another meter downline?

[Vicki Rawls]

Do we get mineral rights on our property we we own for ten years? How do we find out?