I had staked a gas well some years ago. The company doing the development had sold it's holdings to another company, then it was bought out by a third company I also do business with. At the time I had questioned if the well was a Fed well. It had slid into a Tract and out of a Section and often a Tracted area will be Fee minerals. I didn't have the OG plat for the area at the time as I had just started the project (big rush of course) and was out in the field so I called the land people to check and be sure it was a Fed and they assured me it was. So I dropped it (forgot about it). Now some years later the Feds have decided the well stake has to be moved before they will allow drilling and I'm to meet the company tomorrow and move it. I since have gotten copies of all the OG plats (they are all online now anyway). So I'm looking at the ten well stakes they want moved and thinking something looked wrong with this well-sure enough-it's a fee well. It had gotten all this way through I don't know how many reviews through who knows how many people and no one had caught it-including me!
English, Moe. Try communicating in English.
Sorry, it's kind of inside baseball stuff.
A gas well I had staked as a Federal well turned out to actually be over Private minerals. The BLM requires a lenghtly and expensive permitting process. The final portion of the permitting is just concluding after five years, 3 different gas companies owning the field and who knows how many reviews. None of which should have happened for this well. I'm not the one to determine ownership issues, but when I looked at it today it was really clear that it wasn't a Fed well.
I understood everything you said.
They should fire the landman on that project if he doesn't know leased from fee minerals.
It's a complicated area where there was an Independent Resurvey executed in 1917. Tracts that protect already patented lands were laid out and Sections fill in the remaining areas of the township.
The Plats that are created show overlaps with Sections and Tracts (even though they really don't) and it can be quite confusing. The company was selling, people were moving in and out, and this just got missed. I just feel bad I wasn't as proactive as I usually am. At least that thing didn't get drilled.
This is a link to a similar area. A title person's nightmare.
http://www.wy.blm.gov/cadastral/countyplats/campbell/t57nr74w.pdf
I understood it and I've never staked a gas well in my life. Are they gonna play "Blame the Surveyor" on this?
No, it's not really my place to decide that issue. The landman they use is really sharp and I'm pretty sure he was not involved with this one because the company was selling their acreage while this was going on. Actually, I think everyone was really happy.
I just can't believe it got through all the layers of review to this point.
Moe
That GLO plat shows an area a little NW of the No. 1 Bay Horse. My dad surveyed for the seismograph for that field back in 65. I worked East of Campbell County in the Western part of Crook County in 69.
Moe
I worked East of Campbell County in the Western part of Crook County in 69.
Not far from the old homestead of my grandparents.
The Bay Horse Road has seen quite a bit of activity the last decade. On some of those back roads you are about as far from anywhere as you can get in the lower 48.
Moe
Moe:
I've surveyed pipe lines, telephone lines and oil wells all over in that country in the late 60' thru the mid 80's. Who were your grandparents? as I probably had met them or been on their ranch at one time or another.
Moe
Nah! Grandpa had passed by then and Grandma was living in California. But My aunt Ruth Whistler was on the ranch in those days. Lived there until she was 103 and was still driving! NE of Rozet.