Deciding whether to sell

Should you sell your mineral rights?

Often the answer is no. Here is how to think about it, including the cases where we would tell you to keep what you have.

When keeping makes more sense

We buy minerals for a living and we still think plenty of owners should hold. Keeping is usually the better call when:

The interest generates income you rely on, and you are comfortable with it moving up and down with oil and gas prices.
The acreage sits in an area with obvious remaining drilling locations. Undeveloped upside is real, and if you can wait for it, it is yours.
You have no particular use for a lump sum, and no estate complication that a sale would simplify.
A well has only recently come online. Early production is the steepest part of the decline curve and a buyer is pricing what comes after it.

The administration outweighs the income. A few dollars a month can still mean division orders, 1099s, address changes, and probate filings for every heir in the chain.
An estate has to be divided. Minerals do not split cleanly among four siblings. Cash does.
Concentration risk. Your income depends on commodity prices and on an operator’s decisions, neither of which you control.
You have a specific use for the money — taxes, a purchase, medical costs, or consolidating scattered interests.

Four things do most of the work, and understanding them makes any offer you receive easier to judge:

What the wells are making now, and what your decimal share of it is. This is the floor under any valuation.

Shale wells fall off steeply in the first year or two, then flatten. Where a well sits on that curve changes its value enormously.

Whether the tract has room for more wells, and whether the operator has shown any intention of drilling them.

Offers move with the forward market. The same interest is genuinely worth more at $80 oil than at $60.

Accepting a per-acre number with no production analysis. A flat rate per net mineral acre ignores whether your acreage is producing at all.
Treating an unsolicited postcard as a valuation. Mass mailers are opening bids, not appraisals.
Selling under deadline pressure. Any offer that expires in 48 hours is telling you something about the buyer.
Not knowing what you own. Owners routinely hold interests in more tracts than they realise, particularly after an inheritance.

No cost, no obligation, and no one will pressure you. Send us what you have and we will tell you what we can pay.