Before anyone can put a number on your interest, someone has to read the paper trail behind it. Here is what that paper trail should include.
Every appraiser, and every serious buyer, works from the same core set of documents, though what they do with them differs. This is organized as a working checklist: what each document is, why it matters, and where to look if you cannot immediately put your hands on it.
The deed that conveyed the mineral interest into your name is the starting point, whether that is a mineral deed, a warranty deed reserving minerals, or the probate documents establishing your inheritance. If the interest passed through an estate, you also want the will, if any, and the order admitting it to probate, plus any affidavit of heirship recorded if the estate went through an informal or simplified process rather than full probate.
If you do not have copies, the county clerk's office where the property sits maintains recorded real property records, and most counties now have at least partial online indexes, though older instruments may require an in-person or mail request. This is the single most time-consuming document to reconstruct if it is missing, so it is worth starting here first.
Recent royalty check stubs, ideally covering the past twelve to twenty-four months, are what let an appraiser build an actual decline curve for the income approach rather than relying on a regional type curve. Even sporadic or older statements are useful if that is all that exists, since they still anchor the interest to real production rather than pure estimation.
If statements were misplaced, most operators maintain owner portals or will mail duplicates on request, and our royalty statements guide walks through how to read what arrives once you have it in hand.
If the minerals are under lease and producing, the operator should have sent a division order at some point establishing your decimal interest in the well, essentially your percentage share of production revenue from that specific unit. This document is what an appraiser uses to translate gross well production into your specific royalty stream, and it is also what confirms to a buyer exactly what fraction of the interest they would be acquiring.
If you have never received one, or cannot locate it, the operator of record, findable through the state oil and gas regulatory agency's well records, can typically issue a copy or confirm your decimal interest directly.
County tax assessment records showing how the mineral interest is currently valued for property tax purposes, and any 1099 forms received for royalty income, round out the file. These are lower priority than the deed and division order but help corroborate the picture, and your CPA will want the 1099 history regardless when it comes time to substantiate a sale or address depletion, as covered on our taxes page.
Sometimes a document simply is not recoverable, an old lease that predates the county's digital index, or a division order from an operator that was acquired twice since it was issued and no longer answers records requests under its original name. When that happens, we work with a secondary record instead: a landman's runsheet, a prior owner's estate file referencing the same tract, or a current operator's owner relations department, which usually inherited the predecessor's records even if the original letterhead is long gone.
A file with one genuinely unrecoverable piece is not the same as an incomplete file, and it is worth telling us specifically what is missing and why rather than assuming the whole request stalls until every last document turns up. In our experience, most gaps that look total at first, an original lease nobody kept, a deed that burned in an old courthouse fire decades ago, have a workable secondary path once we know precisely what is actually absent rather than guessing at the shape of the hole.
Resolve these questions so the appraisal conclusion can be traced to a defined interest, date, method, and evidence set.
The deed establishing your ownership, since everything else, from division orders to an appraisal report, depends on a clear chain of title behind it.
Contact the well operator directly, found through your state's oil and gas regulatory agency records, and request confirmation of your decimal interest and a copy of the division order.
Twelve to twenty-four months if available, since that gives an appraiser enough history to build a real decline curve rather than relying on regional estimates.
Often yes, though missing documents typically slow the process and can push a buyer toward a more conservative offer or an appraiser toward a more conservative value until gaps are resolved.
Carry the same effective date, interest definition, evidence hierarchy, and limitations into these related appraisal procedures.
What a division order is, how the decimal interest is calculated, and why this one document anchors both appraisal math and royalty payments.
