Sell Mineral Rights in Howard County, TX/NM

Howard County sits on the eastern hinge of the Midland Basin, where the same Spraberry and San Andres pay that made Midland famous starts to shallow out toward the Eastern Shelf.

We spent enough years running completions on the Midland side of the basin to know Howard County doesn't get talked about the way Martin or Midland County does, but the production history here is deep. Big Spring has been an oil town since the 1920s, and a lot of the minerals under this county were split up two and three generations ago, long before anyone was drilling laterals.

That history is exactly why owners here get confusing offers. Some of your acreage might be held by an old vertical San Andres well paying a few dollars a month, while a section line over a new Wolfcamp horizontal is running real volume. We look at both instead of whichever number makes an offer sound bigger.

Where the county sits in the basin

The Midland Basin doesn't stop cleanly at a county line, and Howard County is proof. Moving east from Martin and Midland counties, the Spraberry and Wolfcamp intervals thin and the section starts to shelf out, which is why you'll see older, shallower San Andres and Clearfork wells mixed in with newer horizontal development. Big Spring, the county seat, grew up around that shallower production and the refinery that's operated there for decades.

For a mineral owner, that geologic transition matters more than it sounds. It means Howard County acreage can carry two very different production stories depending on exactly where your tract sits, and a buyer who only looks at a type curve for 'the Midland Basin' generally is going to miss it.

What we actually price

When we look at a Howard County tract we're pulling your division order, your check stubs if you have them, and the Railroad Commission production history on the wellbore or unit you're tied to. If there's active horizontal development nearby with permits filed, that changes the offer. If your interest is under a decades-old vertical well on late-stage decline, that's a different conversation, and we'll tell you that up front rather than dress it up.

We also check for open acreage that hasn't been leased or held by production. Unleased minerals in a county with this much legacy vertical activity are common, and they get priced differently than a producing interest with a royalty history behind them.

Heirship and fractional interests are common here

A meaningful share of the calls we get out of Howard County are from heirs splitting a tract that's been in the family since before the first oil boom. If you're one of six cousins each holding a small fractional interest in a producing well, that's a normal situation for us, not a complication. We can buy a single heir's share without requiring the rest of the family to sell.

If your interest hasn't been probated or the title has a gap somewhere, say a deed that never got recorded, we can usually still work with it, but it will affect timing. We'll walk you through what the courthouse records show before we ever put a number in front of you.