Stolen Royalties!

I just found out that another person is receiving royalties from my well.

The lease is a good one and how this happened remains to be discovered.

It's hard to get the gas operator to reveal such information.

When I brought this up to them they are wanting me to prove it!

No where is this person listed on the lease!

Plus imagine the lost revenues for God knows how long!

I did find the tax record in his name listing my API#..

Listed beside it 'CHK' so this may suggest a 20+ year theft!

My question is who is going to be responsible to return all of the stolen money!?

Bottom line is you need to find out who is also receiving your royalties..

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Permalink Reply by Dott on October 25, 2022 at 5:06am

JK,

It sounds like an O & G company did not do a proper title search somewhere along the line when the property was leased or someone just made an error in their office.  If your  Lawyer has someone do a title search on that parcel that is your proof. At that point if the O & G company does not rectify it you may have to go to court. I doubt that they will want to pay you the lost royalties. This is just an opinion.

 Thanks for sharing. Let us know what happens.

Permalink Reply by Heidlebergman on October 26, 2022 at 4:17am

Do you own all the royalties?  You may own the executive rights and not all of the royalty.  They are two seperate entities.  I am going to bet there is royalty reservation somewhere in the chain title and that share of the royalties did not come into your title.

Permalink Reply by Dott on October 26, 2022 at 6:06am

Heidlebergman is correct. It is very difficult to decipher when property has been sold and Oil and Gas rights may have been reserved.

When a property is to be leased a Landman (or other) goes to the Title Office and does a chain title research sometimes on Microfilm if it goes back far enough. You would be surprised how many people thought when they purchased the land that they were getting all of the O & G rights only to find out later all or some had been severed in the past. 

Sometimes these searches are only done online and can miss things unless someone walks into the office to do the actual research.

My mom was leased in 2011 (only owned oil and gas rights) after a title search was done by the leasing company. Nothing was drilled and the current O&G company sold the lease to another company. When that company wanted to renew the lease for another 5 years the Landman had to do another title search. When he did the search he contacted me to let me know that a 3 acre parcel was left out of the first lease. So I had to hire a Lawyer to confirm that we did indeed own the rights and then do a corrective deed.  The sad part was the people who purchased the Land thought they had owned all of the rights.

Permalink Reply by Jeff Bishop on November 7, 2022 at 3:10am

The only horizontal unit in Clinton District, Mon County, is the Reliance Minerals Unit. Are you in this unit?

The Amended DOU for the north Unit is at DB 1497, Page 393 and lists probably 40 mineral owners. 

The Amended DOU for the South Unit is at Deed Book 1492, Page 686; with about 40 mineral owners. 

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