My Wife and I just sold some land. 40 acres. We did not have the mineral rights to it. Nor do the folks that bought it.
There has been some gas discovered in the area. Say within a 10 mile radius. Still seems very speculative.
I was a little reluctant to sell for a few reasons, one of which is/was what type of surface lease a drilling company might offer us on (let’s pretend) 40 acres of prime drilling property?
How long is the typical surface rights lease? How much a year?
ehh… I don’t know if there is a ‘typical’ surface rights lease. We are in Colorado. Very ball park info would be fine.
The oil company has the right to reasonable use of the surface to get to the oil. This means if they want to cut a fence and put in a gravel road to place a well behind your house they can.
The specific lease is public record and should have been looked at before the sale. Most leases are for a section or 160 acres or more. many are decades old.
When the company purchases the mineral rights, or strikes oil in your baqck yard the surface owner gets nothing.
One of the exceptions to this is damage to the real property, fences, crops ect.
In some cases they try to be good stewards and take in to account the surface owners feelings, but other times they steam roll in and say here is a copy of the lease we own. sue us. Hope this helps. I live in Oklahoma but my reading of the Co. site seems to be very much the same.
Don’t feel sorry. This Is excellent news! We just sold the property for about 20% over market value.
I used to work for PI (Petroleum Information) long, long time ago. I was a kid. I and a few others ran the mapping department.
Through chit chat with the buyer, we discovered that we may know each other. He used to be in oil and gas leasing. Also a long time ago.
It got me thinking that perhaps I had thrown away some surface rights that might have been worth a lot of money. Maybe he knows something I don’t. If, if , if…
The buyer just wants the property as a buffer for his house (he is retired and very well off). As he said. I never really didn’t believe him, but I thought, “what if”?
Thanks for the response. I am much happier with the bird in the hand than two in the bush. And it seems, the bush was empty anyway.