Are Your North Dakota Mineral Rights Worth Anything?

In North Dakota, value concentrates in the Williston Basin counties over the Bakken and Three Forks formations — Williams, McKenzie, Mountrail, Dunn and their neighbors — and varies sharply within them. Two tracts twenty miles apart can differ in value by 10x based on well results around them. The public record is blunt about this: where operators are leasing, permitting, and drilling is where value is.

Offers and leases are priced per net mineral acre (NMA): your fraction of the minerals times the tract’s gross acres. Own an undivided 1/8th of the minerals under a 160-acre quarter? That’s 20 NMA. After generations of splitting, most owners hold less than they assume, and some hold more — the recorded chain of title is the only arithmetic that counts, and it’s the first thing any serious buyer verifies before wiring money.

Open (unleased) minerals in an active area can command lease bonuses plus a negotiated royalty. Leased minerals are already committed — value rides on the royalty rate your lease locked in (older leases at 1/8th pay half of a modern 1/4 royalty). Held by productionmeans a well on your spacing unit keeps the lease alive indefinitely — no new bonus is coming, and value is the royalty stream itself. Which state you’re in is a matter of record: the recorded leases and the wells on your unit.

Producing wells on your spacing unit mean royalty income now — and in the Bakken’s 1,280-acre units, wells anywhere in the unit pay every mineral owner in it. Beyond current production, buyers price undrilled potential: how many additional wells the unit can hold, and whether new permits are being filed nearby. A unit with two old wells and six drillable slots is worth more than its current checks suggest — which is exactly why informed sellers out-negotiate uninformed ones.

Nothing moves mineral value like recorded activity nearby: operators taking leases in your township, mineral buyers closing deeds around you, new permits on adjacent units. This is all public — recorded at the courthouse within days — but almost nobody watches it. We publish it free: the Williams County Activity Report lists every mineral deed and lease recorded each week, including who’s buying and where. If buyers suddenly get active in your township, that letter in your mailbox stops being a mystery.

Unsolicited offers are priced for owners who can’t check the five factors above. Before responding: verify your NMA from the chain, confirm lease status and unit wells, look at the last six months of recorded deeds in your township, and remember that legitimate buyers will still be there after a week of diligence. For interests of real size, an oil-and-gas attorney or certified minerals appraiser is cheap insurance — and showing up with your title already documented cuts their bill substantially.