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Permalink Reply by Tom Copley on January 10, 2011 at 9:29am

Mike, Brian, Peter, Nancy and Ed-- Thank you so much for all of the ideas and input. It's all very helpful to me, and possibly others out there who may be curious about how title searching works. Here's a brief summary--my "how to"--that I put together based on your comments so far:

Title Searching in Pennsylvania and West Virginia

Minerals, oil, gas, coal and other rights first began being seperated in PA sometime after the civil war. The term "minerals" does not include oil, coal and gas.

You will conduct your title search in the court house deed room:

* Start with your title and look at the previous owner and just keep going backwards until you hit about 100 years.
  - start with the current deed reference and trace it back
  - each deed references the previous deed by book and page number
* be sure to search back alot more than fifty years
* read each deed carefully and pay particular attention to reservations
* the oil/gas rights may have been split off as a seperate deed and sold without
  creating a new deed for the surface rights
  - in that case check out the name index
  - the county may have a RSTLN index where they enter the names by the first non vowel/non rstln letter to avoid issues with mispellings
  - check each previous owner to make sure they did not seperately sell off the oil/gas rights
* look for active/expired leases on the property. Use the LANDEX's web site when data available. 
* check for lease assignments. Not all will be recorded.
* if lucky, you'll find a release (of the lease) recorded when the lease expired

Landman do the same thing in verifying deed status
Follow-up:
You can then take what you know and see an attorney who specializes in deed search to confirm your findings.

 

--Tom

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Permalink Reply by 0l1a6laz7smpf on January 10, 2011 at 10:14am

hi Tom,

 A further definition of :

 "f lucky, you'll find a release (of the lease) recorded when the lease expired"

 

Who is responsible for issuing a 'release' of an expired lease for the public records?  and does not having a release of a lease though it be expired cause any type of lien on the property??   I ask this cause I recently found when speaking to the courthouse about some info they told me that there was an outstanding work permit that was started in 2006 and never showed a 'waiver of lien' filed in the court record...well I have a copy to mail them and the company went out of business ...but this was some building work....

Would not having a release of the lease recorded in the public records cause a problem??  as you say 'if lucky'..

Cause if that is a problem for any landowner conducting leases with the O & G companies then we as landowners now need to remember to make sure that they file a release with the court records as another thing to remember in conducting business.

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Permalink Reply by Nancy Mosley on January 10, 2011 at 10:38am

(I am an amateur trying to track down paperwork for royalty property and a few fee (surface and OGM or some version of that) inherited with little paperwork)

As I have found it the lessee, the Leasing company, grants a release from the lease when they are no longer interested in keeping it. I have found some of these, and at least I know that lease is no longer in existence. Otherwise there might be a lease assignment, recorded or not recorded, to try to find. It is always good to see terms of lease (was it an old $100 a year per gas well lease? etc.)

This has been found by index searches by phone with someone from the Clerk of Court's office in the county (Ritchie, WV) where my inherited property is.

For some of this, my ancestor owned a part OGM and I am "wondering" if other royalty owners are leased and we are overlooked, or something. It happened to my mother, and through diligence she was "found".

 

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Permalink Reply by 0l1a6laz7smpf on January 10, 2011 at 11:26am

Hi Nancy...interesting.

"grants a release from the lease when they are no longer interested in keeping it."

I suppose I thought that the lessee at the end of the lease automatically releases the lease.

Yet if persay they didn't supply the release to the public records then it would be wise of the landowner (grantor) to make sure that either that is in the contract originally (so no other term/condition of the lease could hold the grantor in lease when the term has expired) at signing....or we each as landowners need to make sure that we obtain a release of the lease and have it recorded.  

Perhaps this is why some of the older leases are still on record in the courthouses as the owner (grantor) may have not known of a need to have a release (such as a waiver of lien when work is completed on a building) recorded.  In fact some of the leases on the books persay may also be expired.

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Permalink Reply by Karen on January 10, 2011 at 5:02pm

I've had pretty good luck, in WV by contacting the leasing companies. I have a bunch of mineral rights that date back to 1890. Many of them are in "unclaimed property" status right now. And, I can't connect some of the mineral rights to the surface. Penzoil has been very great about giving information.

 

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