What documents does Drillinginfo collect?

Our gatherers (people in the field we hire to collect documents for us) collect:

• Oil & Gas Leases
• Memorandums of Oil & Gas Leases
• Options of Oil & Gas Leases
• Oil & Gas Lease Extensions
• Seismic Options and Leases
• Amendments Related to Term

Drillinginfo does not collect Counterparts, Assignments, or Ratifications because their large volumes would greatly increase our gathering costs and not add cost effective value.

Does Drillinginfo collect every lease in a tract?
No. Drillinginfo does not collect counterparts covering the same tract with the same leasing terms. For example, the minerals in one tract may be owned by 10 people. All 10 people signed individual leases about the same time for the same royalty interest and primary term. Our gatherers will collect the first lease but not the nine remaining counterparts.

What are the leasing data objectives for drillinginfo.com?
Drillinginfo’s intent is to give its customer’s a quick cost effective snapshot of leasing activity in our coverage area. Complete document collection for title purposes is not an objective.

Our leasing coverage allows clients to:

• Keep track of the progress and direction of oil & gas plays
• Determine who is active in an area
• Know the tract acreage and leasing terms offered (royalty, primary term, and bonus when available)

Does Drillinginfo collect leases from every Lessee in a Tract?
For the most part, yes. Historically our focus was to only reflect whether or not a tract was leased. However, we have expanded our criteria to capture all the different lessees in each tract should they exist. Prior to it being made a priority, there were rare instances where we may have missed a lessee. To our knowledge, this happened less than 1% of the time.

You say that you don’t collect counterparts, but I see some on drillinginfo.com. Why?
The reason for this is that not all leases are filed of record in the courthouse at the same time. Our gatherers have no way of determining from one month to the next if a particular lease is a counterpart. Therefore, they may collect counterparts even though the intent is not to collect them.

For example, say there are four mineral owners signing leases covering the same tract, with the same primary term and the same royalty interest. Three of their leases are filed at the same time in one month and the remaining one lease is filed the following month. Our gatherer would collect only one lease in the first month (ignoring the two counterparts filed at the same time) and then collect the one lease the following month without realizing it was a counterpart. This example would also hold true for the leases of different lessees above.

Besides counterparts, are there any other lease type documents you do not collect?
We do not collect oil and gas assignments, ratifications or releases. If 95% of the Drillinginfo membership decided that collecting these was worth doubling or tripling the cost of their subscriptions we would gladly oblige!

I noticed that the leasing coverage in northern Louisiana includes other types of documents. Why?
In northern Louisiana 21 parishes contain a complete mineral record including counterparts, ratifications, assignments, and mineral and royalty deeds in addition to the standard leases, memorandums, and options. This is because the data set in these parishes supports the prescription laws of Louisiana.

Besides fee leases what other types of leases do you collect?
We collect State leases and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) leases in Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Utah.

How often are leases collected?
Fee leases in active counties are collected monthly. Less active areas are collected quarterly, semi-annually or annually. Over 75% of our counties are collected monthly and another 20% are collected every two or three months.

For a county to be collected only semi-annually or annually, it would have had to have five or less leases filed in the previous 12 months.

State and Federal leases are collected after each announced lease sale.

For specific coverage see Resources by State.

How do you decide to add another county?
As activity increases in certain areas Drillinginfo will endeavor to add county coverage to service the needs of our customers.