A Request For Help From Readers -- Unitization -- December 8, 2020

Updates

December 9, 2020: sent to me by a reader last night shortly after the original note was posted --

I received my first royalty payment from XTO for the GBU on 06/25/19. XTO pays royalties on the 25th and 30th of each month, the check dated the 30th is usually for the GBU.

By the way, one can find the unit boundaries at the NDIC GIS map server, example:

Original Post

A few fields have been unitized in the Bakken. 

A reader asked a question about unitization. 

I don't have a dog in that fight; I don't have personal experience.  I did not have an answer. I am curious if any mineral owner has experience that could shed light on this -- more for the reader's benefit than mine.

We will use GBU as the example (because that was the specific unit the reader asked about).

GBU = Grinnell Bakken Unit.

See this post where GBU Janice was noted. 

Two permits renewed:

• EOG: a Clarks Creek permit in McKenzie County;
• XTO: a GBU Janice permit in Williams County;

For other XTO GBU wells, see this post. 

The reader asked "when would royalties start to reflect unitization of this field?"

I assume royalties would be affected effective the date the field was unitized. 

Going though a few of the "GBU" wells suggest this occurred on/about May, 2019. [Wow, was I on target or not -- see updates above. Wow!]

This, of course, raises many more questions but instead of running through a litany of questions and showing my ignorance, I will simply ask for any input from any mineral owner, land man, or armchair oil and gas lawyer that might shed light on this phenomenon.  

For those interested, one can google "oil field unitization." I did not spend a lot of time on this but this site (page 13 of the download / page 437 of the source -- both the same page) seems to provide a fair amount of useful information which suggested to me that the date the regulating authority granted unitization of a field is when mineral royalties would reflect that change. 

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