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Permalink Reply by Alan Bowers on March 19, 2014 at 2:21pm

Fortunately for you the Trumbull County Recorder had their records digitized for web access just before the BP America - ALOV Lease signing in 2012.

You will want to know your parcel number and/or numbers.

You can find these by going to http://auditor.co.trumbull.oh.us/ and click on Property Search. You can put in the property owner name and it will come back with the parcel number(s).

Then,

Go to http://recorder.co.trumbull.oh.us/ , click on -- Find A Record --, and then choose a simple or advanced search to start digging through the data.

You can try using an Advanced Search with the Parcel number and it should bring up most documents related to that parcel.  However, it does not always bring up all related documents.

What you are looking for is (or hoping it isn't there) a Lease being linked to your property.

You should first make a list of all people that have owned your property starting with yourself and work your way backwards.  Once you have a list of all of the previous property owners you want to do a search on each of their names to see if they have ever entered into a lease involving your parcel number(s).

These are things you can do, via the internet, on your own with just some of your time and an internet connection invested. If you are worried about going over your down load limit with your Internet Service Provider you could go to your local library and access the information through their WiFi network.

You are able to download copies of the documents from the Trumbull County Recorder web site.

It is time consuming and the guys at Buckeye know this.  They also know that if a title search was already done and if they can get you to give them information from a title search it will save them a lot of time.

My understanding of NELA was that they were a Landowner group trying to put together a bunch of landowners so they could get a better deal with an Oil and Gas Driller.  NELA would collect some sort of fee for brokering the deal and the Lease would be between the property owner and the driller.  The landowner would have to sign an agreement with NELA to allow NELA to negotiate on behalf of the landowner.  There usually was a time limit to the landowner agreement with NELA.

A couple of questions for you 1)Did you enter into a lease with a driller and fail the title search?

2)Did NELA perform a Title Search on your behalf? 3)Did you already have a Title Search performed "Back To Patent" with attention paid to any Leases?

If the answer is No to all of these questions then you are not going to have the "Part B" that you are being asked for.

Taking a Title Search Back To Patent refers to searching the title history of a parcel of land back to the time when the State of Ohio issued a deed from the State to the first landowner of the property.  When you do a title search on property for example when you buy a house they don't usually go that far back.  When you sign a lease with an Oil and Gas company they will do a title search Back To Patent.  This is usually done after the lease was signed but before any money is paid to the landowner.

If you hire someone to do a Title Search on your behalf, you should ask them to take it Back To Patent and also be looking for any leases associated with your parcel(s) of land.  They will probably charge more money for this than they would for a search that they would do if you were just buying a house because it will take more time.

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