• Selling Mineral Rights
    • Sell Oil & Gas Royalties
    • Why Sell Your Mineral Rights?
    • Mineral Rights Value
    • Producing vs Non-producing Mineral Rights
    • Are Your Minerals in an Active Area?
    • Four Things for Older Mineral Owners to Consider
  • Mineral Rights 101
    • Types of Mineral Rights
    • Mineral Management
    • Locating Your Mineral Rights (Map Search)
    • Oil & Gas Royalty Statement
    • Transferring the Ownership of Mineral Rights
    • Finding Unclaimed Mineral Rights
    • Mineral Management Books
    • Ownership Risks
    • Buying Mineral Rights
    • Why Are My Royalty Checks Low?
  • We Buy From
    • Individual Mineral Owners
    • Family Trusts
    • Non-Profits (in bulk or as needed)
    • We also take donations!
  • Contact Us
    • About
    • What Makes Us Different?
    • Contact
  • 214-444-8805

Locating Your Mineral Rights on a Map


The first step of mineral management is to know what you own!

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How Do I Locate My Oil and Gas Leases?


If you are like most people who inherit mineral rights , you have no idea where to start looking for information.

You might have inherited your minerals from a relative that kept poor records or perhaps you didn’t even know you owned mineral interest until a landman contacted you, offering to lease your minerals.

Even if you inherited your mineral from a well-organized relative, the topic may be new and unfamiliar to you.

Let’s start by locating the legal description, which will help you find the property on an interactive map. Once you’ve found your property, you can explore the wells in which you own interest as well as the oil and gas activity in the surrounding area.

4 Steps to Locating Your Mineral Rights


New mineral owners often ask, "How do I found out about my mineral rights?". You may have to locate your relative's documents, but once you know the legal description, it's fairly easy to locate the tract of land under which you own mineral rights and view the wells in a given lease. If you inherited mineral rights, you should be able to locate royalty statements, leases, division orders, and mineral deeds. These documents will help you figure out what you own and provide essential information to locating your mineral leases on a map.

1. Find Your Legal Description

You’ll need the legal description to locate your property. The legal description is not the same as the physical address.

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2. Locate the Property using a GIS

Each state’s oil and gas regulatory agency has an online GIS that can be used to locate a property via a legal description.

Learn more

3. View the Wells

Once you have located your minerals, you can see the wells on your property as well as the offset activity in nearby tracts of land.

Learn more

4. Record the Information on a Spreadsheet

Use a Mineral Management spreadsheet to keep records of what you own (interest and wells)

Download

Finding the Legal Description


A legal description is a way of describing the geographical location of a property’s boundaries and is used for real estate transactions, including oil & gas contracts. A legal description is not the same as a property address.

Legal descriptions vary from state to state and can differ greatly when referring to many acres of land or small urban lots.

How Do I Locate the Legal Description?

If you inherited an interest in a producing oil or gas lease, the legal description should be available by:

  • Looking up your relative’s name on the county appraisal district’s website
  • Viewing signed or proposed oil and gas leases or division orders
  • Calling the company that sends royalty checks to ask for the legal description.

Each state’s regulatory agency uses a slightly different GIS viewer but typically, you can look up a property using the legal description.

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Using a GIS Viewer


Each state’s regulatory agency uses a slightly different Graphical Information System (GIS) viewer. To find your state’s public GIS viewer, google “[your state] oil and gas GIS”. Or, if your property is located in the top 9 oil and gas producing states, you can find the GIS listed below.

Oil and Gas GIS Viewers all work in the same general way. There should be some way to search based on a combination of the county and the following information from your legal description. In many states, is this is called the Public Land Survey System (PLSS).

  • Range
  • Township
  • Section
  • Block
  • Abstract
  • API

Once you have located your inherited mineral rights, it’s easy to see which wells, if any are located in your property and even the wells and drilling activity in the surrounding area.

You can even overlay this map with geology maps or drilling activity maps to see if your mineral rights are located in an active area.

GIS Viewers for the Top Oil & Gas Producing States


If your state is not listed here, just google your state plus “oil and gas GIS”.

Texas
Texas Railroad Commission Public GIS

North Dakota
North Dakota ArcIMS Viewer

Kansas
Kansas Geological Survey GIS
California
California Department of Conservation Maps

New Mexico
New Mexico Oil Conservation Division Map

Oklahoma
Oklahoma OCC Oil and Gas
Colorado
Colorado COGCC Online GIS

Wyoming
Wyoming Interactive Oil and Gas Map

Louisiana
Louisana SONRIS(NG) Map

Mineral Management Spreadsheet


The first and most essential part of owning mineral rights is to know what you own. This should be well documented and organized in files and a spreadsheet.

Lower your risk by keeping title documents, leases, and division orders in a folder along with one royalty statement from each operator.

The details about your mineral rights, including land tracts, units, leases, wells, and division orders should be organized in a spreadsheet or mineral management software.

Download the Free Mineral Management Spreadsheet.

Want to know more about managing your mineral rights? We have video about the advantages of actively managing your minerals, what documents you should keep, how to organize your files, monthly royalty audits, evaluate mineral management software, and if it's all too overwhelming, how to outsource the management of your mineral rights.

What Are Your Mineral Rights Worth?


Mineral valuations are subjective and very much dependent on the following factors:

  • Location
  • Decimal Interest
  • Producing vs. Non-Producing
  • Type of Mineral Right
  • Lease Development (likelihood of future wells)
  • Operator

The most valuable mineral rights are located in the Permian, Marcellus, DJ Basin, Bakken, and the Eagle Ford areas. These are areas with the most horizontal drilling, and the wells produce vast amounts of oil and gas.

Rule of Thumb
A good rule of thumb for producing wells outside of the major shale plays is 3-5 years of royalty revenue.

Valuing Minerals in Major Shale Plays
Minerals in the major shale plays are often priced at a market price per net mineral acre.

Non-Producing Minerals
Non-producing minerals are also priced per net mineral acre, used based on the going lease bonus rate.

Mineral Rights Value Calculator


Please enter your last three royalty checks to calculate the approximate value:





$0.00 - $0.00


* This calculator has limited functionality and assumes the well or wells have been producing for more than 18 months. It does not consider location, production, lease terms, commodity price, operator, or future development potential. Please contact us to get a custom quote on your specific minerals.

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Why People Sell Their Mineral Rights


Why do people sell their mineral rights? While a lot of the older generations really value and feel sentimental about their mineral rights, we have found that younger generations are less attached. Sometimes people who inherit mineral rights simply don't want to support the oil and gas industry. Other times they find the learning curve and mineral management duties to be overwhelming. But most often, we find that people sell their minerals because they would rather have the cash upfront rather than receiving declining royalty checks over a period of years.

Why People Sell Their Minerals Rights:


I am one of the millions who lost their job due to the COVID-19 lockdown. I sold my minerals to get me through this terrible time. If my grandmother could see our current situation, she would understand. I'm so grateful to have had minerals to sell. Many people don't have this option.S. BARNES

With the price of oil declining and operators practically giving gas away, I decided to sell before the bottom falls out.J. CRUZ

I am tired of paying taxes and managing small mineral rights that don't really add up to much. It would be a pity to further divide the minerals among my children when they are worth so little. Also, I don't want to obligate my children to the expense of having an attorney file ancillary probate in each county - just to transfer the ownership. It's best to sell the minerals now and put my affairs in order. V. Collins

My oil wells have been producing for decades and the reserves are almost depleted. Once the wells are plugged, the value will be significantly lower. I'd rather cash out now.R. ROBERTSON

I inherited mineral rights, but don't want to be involved with fracking and fossil fuels. I would prefer to support renewable energy and do my part to reverse climate change.

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About Blue Mesa Minerals

We buy producing and non-producing minerals

in Texas, New Mexico, Kansas, Oklahoma, North Dakota, and

other oil and gas producing states.


We also buy wind energy royalties from landowners who host wind turbines on their property.


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