Need some help from the oilpatch guys.

[Stranger]

What the heck are these things? Should the companies be paying royalties to the land owner? #ad
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[DOWG]

The landowners will only be paid royalties if they are also the mineral owners. For example, when I get ready to drill a well, I go to the courthouse to see who the landowner is and check to see if he is also the mineral owner. If he is not, I will offer to pay the landowner surface damages and so many dollars an acre to lease his property. In this case, the landowner has no right to recieve oil & gas production revenues. I would then make a deal with the mineral owner to pay him a percentage of the oil & gas production while I am obligated to pay for the drilling, testing and completion of the well at no cost to him.



When ya'll buy a house with land, you need to check the contract because you will usually find you have purchased only the surface rights and the minerals have been retained by the seller. Buyer beware.

 

[Champane Flight]

Well yea...

The first pics are of location, lease #s, and unit #s on the wells.

The next are the wells themselves. These look like gas wells, although could be wrong. The last pic there is a rectifier for cathotic protection , looks a little out of service. The reciepient of royalitys could be anyone one owned the minerals rights at the time of drilling. You could look it up in the county records by location or look up the operator of the wells and call them to find out if they are still active. They do not look active to me and should be cleaned up,,, Can't be sure of that without being there.

 

[JSmith]

If they are not gas wells then they are light oil oilwells. Light oil will have a gravity above 25,I worked with light oil with a gravity of 35 and sometimes higher. Light grav. oil is big bucks. As stated above it will depend if the property owner has min/rights,which will depend on when the owner bought the property.

 

[Stranger]

Thanks guys

You guys are the best! The property belonged to my cousin's late Grandfather, passed to his Father and now to him. His late Aunt has been making county tax payments on "unimproved property" for years.



He has a letter his Grandfather wrote stating something like, " I purchased the property in 1925 and leased it in 1938. I was paid royalties until 1955 and then they stopped. "



Nothing further from Grandfather, father or anyone. We found a plot map and found the area. The lease #s, unit numbers coincide with the numbers on the plot map.



Any ideas on how to find out if there is any money available?

 

[JSmith]

Get a vulture,I mean an attorney

its early I couln not help it

 

[Champane Flight]

Lease agreement

If you do not have a orginal lease agreement, check at the county courthouse record dept for a copy on file. The Wells probably are out of service and have been since 55. But you can also check for storage tanks in area, maybe compresser stations with the same operators? See if this company is still in buisness, if they are they are still responsible for cleanup or royalitys if they are still producing. I would do this myself before contacting bottom feeder, as he will charge for doing the same thing... ... ...

 

[Johnboy3]

It looks like from one of the pictures that someone has done some piping work not to long ago. If you notice the pipe and fittings on the right side of the well looks new and the teflon tape is still pretty white. The well is shut in though, so they are not producing it right now. It's really hard to say what is going on there.



We work almost exclusively in the oil patch. Surface or land owners are entitled to absolutely nothing other then the sale of the timber that must be cut if they have no interest in the mineral rights. The only special stipulations for drilling on someone else's surface where you own the mineral rights is that you can not put a well within 500 feet of any permanant structure and erosion and settlement plans must be followed. Most oil and gas companies will work with the land owner around here to some extent. Most land owners will get some roads put in, their timber cut, or perhaps a pond put in at the oil companies expense. Just depends.



The really bad part is there is no way to stop a mineral owner from drilling on your property. One place we built well locations was basicaly in peoples' back yards and fields. They all got together and tried to fight it, but in the end they lost. The only way they could stop them was by buying out the mineral rights. The rights were split between several interests and of course they inflated the prices so sky high the people could never afford them. Their lawyer even told them that they were fighting a lost cause. The oil company did do some things for them. Several of them got their driveways limstoned and some excavation for free. Other then that they only got the pleasure of being able to look out their back door and enjoying the view of a nice oil well.



I couldn't find anything on Four Star Oil and Gas, but here is a link to Nuevo Oil and Gas http://www.nuevoenergy.com and a link for the folks who might manage and oversee that lease http://www.teai.com/Home.htm



I don't know if contacting them will get you anywhere, but it might be somewhere to start. Good Luck.