Are Your
Mineral Rights
in a Hot Area?

Shale Plays and Other Hot Drilling Areas

Perhaps you've just inherited mineral rights. Or maybe a landman came knocking and offered to lease your minerals and drill a well. In either case, you might be curious about where your minerals are located and if they are in a hot area.

The fracking boom quickly turned the United States into a leading producer of oil and gas, granting us energy independence. Older oil fields and conventional drilling were replaced by fracked horizontal wells, often stretching 2-3 miles across multiple tracts of land. Overnight, oil fields that everyone thought were depleted were suddenly capable of producing enormous quantities of oil and gas.

So, how do you know if your mineral rights are located in a hot area?
Image Source: EIA

Easy 3-Step Process to Overlay Maps

It's actually quite easy to see if your mineral rights are in an active drilling area. We will follow a three-step process using tools that are free or readily accessibility (you probably already have them). We will dive into the details of each step further down the page.

Locate Your Mineral Rights

Armed with your legal description and your states oil and gas regulatory commission's GIS viewer, you can easily locate the tract of land in which you own interest. You'll take a screen shot and save it for later.

Learn more

Locate the Drilling Activity in Your County

Use ShaleXP to find a map of the drilling activity in your county. Take note of the ranking and upward (or downward) production trends. Then take a screen shot and save for later.

Learn more

Overlay the Maps

Using Microsoft PowerPoint, overlay one map over the other, and change the opacity of the top map to make it transparent enough to see both maps. This will show you if your minerals are in an active area.

Learn more

Locate Your Mineral Rights

The first step is to locate your mineral rights on a map. Each state's oil and gas regulatory agency has an interactive GIS viewer where you can put in the legal description of your minerals.

Need help using the GIS? We have an article (and video) that walks you through the process of locating your minerals on a map. We use Texas as an example, but most GIS viewers work similarly.

Once you find your mineral rights on the map, zoom out so that you can see where your minerals are in relation to the entire county.

Take a screenshot - we'll use this later.
Looking up Reeves County on the Texas Railroad Commission's Public GIS Viewer
Find drilling activity for the county where your minerals are located.

Use ShaleXP to Find Your County's Drilling Activity

ShaleXP is a fantastic resource and you don't need a subscription to see a basic map of your county's drilling activity.

Follow these steps:
  • Navigate to State Directory
  • Scroll down and select your county
  • Take a screen shot of your county's drilling activity
While you're on ShaleXP it may be interesting to explore your state and county's production graphs and notice the upward or downward trend as well as the state and national ranking.

Overlay the Two Maps to See if Your Minerals are in an Active Area

Now that you have a screenshot of where your minerals are located within the county lines and a screenshot of the drilling activity within the county, we'll overlay the maps so that you can see if your minerals are in an active drilling area.
  • Open Microsoft PowerPoint
  • Create a blank slide
  • Drag and drop both screen shots on to the slide (drag the ShaleXP screenshot first)
  • Right click on the GIS screenshot and choose Format Picture from the menu
  • Under Picture, select Transparency and reduce the transparency until you can see the ShaleXP map below the GIS map.
  • Resize the images so that the county lines are the same size and you can see where your minerals are and the drilling activity.
Now, you should be able to see where your minerals are and if they are located in an active drilling area.

Even in Reeves County, Texas, which is the most productive county in the United States, there are good and bad areas to have mineral rights.

Location is probably the number one factor in determining the value of your mineral rights.
Use PowerPoint (or a graphics software) to overlay the two maps.

How are Mineral Rights Valued?

There are a lot of factors that play into the value of mineral rights, including location, producing vs non-producing, current oil and gas prices, production figures, lease terms and even the operator of the well or wells.

Minerals in the hottest shale plays are more valuable than those in older fields with conventional wells.

Producing minerals are worth more than non-producing minerals because they are generating revenue.

When oil and gas prices drop, revenue drops and sometimes operators are unable to continue operations..

Highly productive wells (and off-set wells) can increase the value of your minerals.

Favorable lease terms (such as a 25% royalty) favorably impact the value of the leased minerals.

A small number of operators are unethical and their reputation automatically devalues your minerals.

Why Sell?

Selling your minerals rights is easy. The hard part is deciding whether or not to sell - especially if the sage advice, "Never sell your minerals" haunts you. The fact remains that many people do sells their minerals and they do so for a variety of reasons.

Why People Sell Their Minerals Rights:

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

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

My husband passed away. I'm not really interested in his mineral rights. I have a lot of expenses right now and am overwhelmed so I'd like to get the most I can for this mineral interest and I can simplify my life. R. Bach

I don't have any heirs. I'd rather have the money than leave these mineral rights to someone I barely know.K. Henderson

My royalty checks are small. Once I split them between my three children, they won't really be worth the headache of managing them. B. Moss

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