oil well locations

I have always located the boundaries of everything in the entire unit in relation to at least one Headright boundary.

[sarcasm]We didn't share everything with Pablo. He like the office too much.[/sarcasm]

Does your state require a boundary survey for oil well staking?

They require that the well be placed into a "window" (or called an exception well if not in the window) within a spacing unit and tied to a Section line. It's up to the companies to determine how much surveying they need to do. They will be liable to pay the correct parties for mineral rights. Often, the owners of the surface do not own all or even any of the minerals.

It's also up to the companies to pay the surface owners for damage created during the drilling process. Generally, pipelines and utilities are handled with a surface use agreement and as long as the drilling operation is inside the leese boundary they do not need easements.

Many areas are in large units (a township or larger is not uncommon) and all the owners in that unit will share in production from each well. In that case only the boundaries along the unit boundary need to be found and a well needs to be more than 460' in the unit from an outside boundary.

Of course, there are many exceptions.
Mineral payments are almost always calculated using record acreages.

A location plat is required by the Railroad Commission in Texas, but the plat is not required to be prepared by a surveyor. I have seen some location plats prepared by landmen. Any similarity with ground conditions is purely coincidental. It behooves the mineral developer to have a surveyor involved because locating a well on someone else's property is pretty stupid. There are also minimum spacing requirements.

The landowner can file for a deed of acquittance for the excess and ownership of the minerals is dependent on the status of the mineral rights when the land was originally titled or patented. Revised field notes prepared in conjunction with a deed of acquittance requires the employment of a Licensed State Land Surveyor at what can be substantially increased costs.

In my 3.25 years in West Texas working under an LSLS, we prepared 2 sets of revised field notes. One for an oil company who wanted to pay for the acquittance deed. The other for a proposed solar farm on State owned section. All other oil companies I dealt with used record acreage. Most sections I have encountered have excess.

Each state is different of course. Since I have worked in the oil patch in many states for the past 30 years, it's a hodge podge of requirements. Even so, the requirements are usually a plat of the well location and submitted to the entity of the state that approves the permit to drill or the application to drill. In the states I work in there are NO requirements that a boundary survey is performed per se. Generally it is a plat with the section lines exhibited by the surveyor and dimensions off the section lines (PLSS States). The plats can vary from a piece of sh/t that exhibits nothing but the ignorance of the surveyor, to a plat that is professional and the surveyor has treated it as a boundary survey. In my 30 years I've seen just about everything and anything. Note...the State of Nebraska accepts plats that contains no certification and are even submitted by surveyors utilizing adjacent state registrations...go figure. In the state of Colorado many of the surveyors use the statement on the plat "This does not represent a boundary survey". Which, when it comes to liability and some of the lawsuits I've been involved in, the statement doesn't work in limiting the liability of the survey i.e. weasel words didn't work.

Pablo

Well, that's not entirely correct about Pablo. The RRC in Texas only requires two ties from the unit/lease line and two ties from the survey(original grant) line to place it. It must be at 1"=1000' and on a legal sheet. So, if you have a client that allows you to do a full boundary on the unit for new division orders, then great. Otherwise, you tie the lines necessary. Many times the mineral conveyances have taken place 50 to 70 years ago, and the surface no longer resembles the minerals, so that makes most of us, work from the old stuff and not look at the surface deeds.

Enter the pipeline and easement senario. Now, we are wholly within the purview of the Texas Board of Professional Land Surveying and if you do easements, presumably you're working on the surface, now the easements have to be up to boundary standards, even though you can create centerline easements (which is what I do 99% of the time).

The board says that if you sign it, it better be a boundary survey. The RRC says that the statement is necessary on the plat "I hereby state that this plat was prepared for me and that to the best of my knowledge, same is true and correct." So, we typically, unless our client has allowed the full boundary survey of the unit, do not sign and seal location plats, and the in-house landman does it. I've emailed many to the investigator and he finds no board violations with our practices.

Kentucky, well, I couldn't speak to that, but that's how we do it in Texas for our O&G companies.

Yes, I very RARELY find that the grant is deficient.

Paul:

I tried to post some images of a well location I did in 1982 for a client on Federal Leases or Federal Lands, but the files were too large and would not upload to the site. If you would like, give me an e-mail address and I will send them directly to you. There are about 5 pages, which are the main portion of the items submitted to the client. I think that there are about 3 more pages that I did not scan related to this well location.

I'm from Illinois, and its kind of vague in my opinion. Your statement, just pull off fences seems to be the norm. Its also allowed for engineers to sign them. In Illinois, there is a standard form that is filled out.

David

I never stated to "just pull off the fences". I always ran out the entire section to locate all the corners in order to do a complete breakdown of the section into the pertinent aliquot part that the well was situate in to determine the center of the "40" if that was the intent of where the well was to be located. If necessary, I also located the necessary monuments needed to locate any missing corners regarding the ¼ of the section in which the well would be located. There was one individual operating in Wyoming that would just scale the well position off a quad map if one was available and use that for staking.