Questions and record guides
Questions about the land record
Plain answers to what attorneys and owners ask about leases, royalties, units, easements and heirship, and how the records are kept in Texas and Louisiana.
Common questions
- How do you prove an oil and gas lease terminated?With dates. Where the facts for a lease termination claim sit in the lease, the state well records and the county records.
- What documents show who owns minerals after a death?Probated wills, administrations, affidavits of heirship and judgments: what the record shows after a mineral owner dies.
- How is a royalty decimal checked?Rebuild it from the instruments: the owner's fraction, the lease royalty and the tract's share of the unit. A worked sample.
- How do you tell if a lease is held by production?Find a producing well the lease's terms count, then check production has not stopped longer than the lease allows.
- How do you check which tracts are in a pooled unit?Read the recorded unit designation, its plat and tract list, then check each lease's pooling clause against the unit.
- What does a landman expert witness do?A landman expert explains the land record and land practice: who owned what of record, and how the land work was done.
- How do you find a pipeline easement on a property?Search the county records under every surface owner for grants, then follow each one to the company that holds it now.
- How do you read the deductions on a royalty check?What each line on a royalty check stub shows, and how to set the deductions beside the words of the lease.
- What is a division order title opinion?The title opinion an operator gets before paying on a well: every owner, every decimal and every requirement.
- How is retained acreage figured?From the lease's clause, applied well by well: the trigger date, the acreage kept around each well and any depth limit.
How the record works in Texas and Louisiana
- Where Texas land and mineral records are keptCounty clerk, district clerk, appraisal district, Railroad Commission and General Land Office: what each holds.
- How Louisiana parish land and mineral records workClerk of court conveyance records, judgments of possession, mineral servitudes and state unit orders in Louisiana.
- What is a runsheet?A runsheet lists every recorded instrument affecting a tract, in order, with the facts a title examiner needs.
- What is an abstract of title?A compiled history of the recorded instruments affecting a tract, prepared to a date. How it differs from a runsheet.
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What happens next
We check conflicts, then come back with who fits: a landman on our team, or a landman we know who works that county or that kind of dispute. How it works.
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