New Resource Site: For Mineral Owners

The biggest shortcoming on my site: links for mineral owners. It seems such sites come and go, are few and far between. The number of those folks receiving royalty income from the Bakken should be increasing exponentially:

• early on: the original landowner, the homesteader, one individual with perhaps four surviving children (first)
• then: the four surviving children, my dad's generation, the greatest generation, gradually passing away (second)
• then, three or four children of those four surviving children, the baby boomers, now sixteen mineral owners from the original homesteader (third)
• next, two or three children from those baby boomers, my children's generation, and we are up to 32 mineral owners from the original owner (fourth)
• and, after that, one or two children from my children's generation; the iGeneration, my grandchildren's generation, and we are to 32 - 64 mineral owners (fifth)

The homesteader probably received little to no royalties, and really didn't follow the oil sector in North Dakota all that much.

The second generation, older, many of them seniors when the Bakken boom hit its stride, were getting huge royalty checks, but didn't understand how it all worked.

One or two members of each extended family in the third generation began to take an interest in the boom; helped the family set up trusts; some may have become active in ND politics shaping the oil sector; probably the most active generation;

Each succeeding generation -- with smaller and smaller royalty checks; simply because the minerals were spread out among so many heirs; most in this generation will have less interest in understanding how it works, simply because the beneficiaries of the original landowner and the one or two members of the extended family in the third generation that "put things on auto-pilot."

Those in the fourth, fifth, and future generations may look for more information regarding mineral rights.

All mineral owners will all of a sudden have to deal with taxes, and perhaps K-1s for the first time.

A reader has sent me a link to a "new" site -- at least "new" to me.

• I have not seen it until now, but it will be linked at the sidebar at the right, as well as at the tab above. at the tab at the top: Minerals
• at the link at the sidebar: near the top, "the top seven" to start your day.

Link here: Mineral Section - Mineral Rights.