Permian Basin Mineral Rights

Permian Basin is an umbrella term covering two distinct sub-basins and multiple stacked pay zones, and a careful title review has to identify exactly which of those your tract falls into before a decimal means anything.

When we say Permian Basin, we mean the broad West Texas and southeast New Mexico region that includes both the Midland Basin to the east and the Delaware Basin to the west, separated by the Central Basin Platform, along with older conventional plays that predate the current horizontal shale cycle in both areas. If your lead or lease simply references the Permian Basin generally rather than a more specific sub-basin, our review starts by pinpointing exactly which county, and which side of the Central Basin Platform, your tract sits in, since Midland-side and Delaware-side development, pooling practices, and typical stacked-pay depth all differ.

We buy fee minerals, royalty interests, ORRI and select non-operated working interest positions across the full Permian footprint, and our approach to each interest follows the specific sub-basin and formation guidance appropriate to where your tract actually sits, rather than treating Permian as one uniform play.

Why sub-basin location changes everything

A tract in Midland County and a tract in Reeves County are both technically Permian Basin, but they sit in different geologic sub-basins with different stacked-pay depths, different typical operators, and often different pooling histories, since Midland Basin development traces back to the 1950s while much of the Delaware Basin's intensive horizontal activity is more recent. We do not price a Permian interest without first confirming this location, because a generic Permian quote without sub-basin context would be guessing.

Conventional legacy production beneath the shale story

Before the current horizontal boom, the Permian Basin was already one of the most productive conventional oil regions in the country, and many tracts carry decades of vertical production history from formations like the San Andres or Clearfork that predate and sit above the deeper Wolfcamp and Spraberry shale zones now being developed horizontally. We check whether your interest includes this legacy conventional production, current horizontal shale production, or both, since older conventional leases sometimes carry different royalty terms than modern horizontal agreements.

We also check whether your specific tract has any history of secondary or enhanced recovery activity from its conventional production era, since some older Permian fields moved to waterflood decades before the current shale cycle, and a legacy waterflood unit agreement can still govern how royalty from shallower zones is calculated today.

Fee minerals and undeveloped stacked-pay potential

For fee mineral owners specifically, the Permian's defining characteristic is its stacked pay: multiple productive zones at different depths under the same surface acreage, not all of which are necessarily developed yet. We evaluate current production alongside nearby well activity and confirmed spacing to understand how much of a tract's potential is already captured in existing royalty versus still undeveloped, and we price fee minerals with that fuller picture in mind rather than looking only at the current check.

Working interest and plugging liability across old and new wells

Because the Permian has produced continuously for so long, non-operated working interest packages here sometimes include a mix of decades-old vertical wellbores and recently drilled horizontal wells within the same portfolio. We review the JOA and well inventory carefully for any WI position, since plugging and abandonment liability on an old marginal vertical well is a real cost that needs to be weighed against the value of production from newer horizontal wells in the same package.

We also confirm whether your interest includes both the surface fee and mineral fee or minerals only, since some Permian tracts were sold with the surface retained separately decades ago, and while surface ownership does not affect what we pay for your minerals, it does affect which deed instrument and which county requirements apply when we prepare the closing documents.