How to use Mineral Truth

Start on the map, search a piece of land

When you sign in, you land on the county map — every square is a section, every dot is a well, and the orange diamonds are new drilling permits. Click the "Search" button in the top-left corner, pick the Section, Township, and Range from the dropdowns (that's the legal description), and click the blue "Search Documents" button. One search pulls every courthouse document ever recorded for that section.

Tip: You can also just click any section right on the map — that runs the same title search instantly.

Results open right beside the map

The results panel slides in next to the map, so the land you searched stays in view — the section is shaded blue and its spacing unit is outlined in dashed red. The four boxes at the top give you the big picture in one glance: how many documents we indexed, how many people and companies currently own minerals here, and the verified net mineral and net royalty acres. Below them, three tabs organize everything: Ownership, Chain of Title, and Unit Participants. Need a report to keep or share? Click "Download Runsheet PDF".

Click any owner to see their ownership info

The Ownership tab lists every current owner in the section. Click any owner's row and it expands to show everything we know: the wells in their tract and the spacing unit size, and every recorded instrument that touches their interest — click an instrument row to view the scanned courthouse document itself. Solid black numbers are verified against the recorded chain; gray italic numbers with a ~ are honest estimates, shown when the county record alone can't prove the exact share.

Tip: Hundreds of owners is a lot to scroll — type a name in the "Filter by name..." box to jump straight to the owner you care about.

See who else is paid on the unit's wells

Wells here are drilled on spacing units that usually span two sections, and everyone in the unit appears on the division orders — even owners whose land is in the neighboring section. The Unit Participants tab lists those other-section owners, with their home section, tract, acres, royalty, and unit decimal. If you've ever wondered why someone shows up on a check for a section they don't own minerals in, this tab is the answer.

Follow the chain of title

The Chain of Title tab lays out the section's full history as a timeline — every deed, lease, probate, and assignment in date order, with year markers and a colored dot for each instrument type. Each row shows who conveyed to whom; click any row to view the actual scanned document behind it.

Tip: Tracing one family through hundreds of records? Type a name, instrument type, or document number into the filter box and the chain narrows instantly.

Click any well on the map

Every well in the county is drawn on the map, colored by status — green for active, orange for drilling, gray for inactive or plugged — and their laterals appear as you zoom in. Click a well and a panel opens with its operator, field, spud date, depth, and API number, its spacing unit with acreage and legal descriptions, cumulative oil and gas, and the full monthly production history as a decline curve. "View participants & owners" jumps to everyone paid on that well.

Tip: Know the well but not the land? Type its name or API number into the search panel's Well box — the map glides to it and opens this panel automatically.

Search by name instead

Don't know the legal description? Open the search panel, type a person or company name into the Party Name box, and click "Search Documents". Leave the land fields empty to search the whole county, or combine a name with a legal description to filter to one section.

See everything they own

A name search returns every mineral position that owner holds across the whole county — section by section, with tract, interest, acres, royalty rate, and lease status for each — and lights up every section they hold in amber right on the map. Click any row to drill into that section, or click "Download Portfolio PDF" for a report of their entire portfolio.

Or just ask Derrick

Derrick is the built-in assistant in the bottom-right corner. Ask him how anything in the app works — "why are some numbers gray?" — or hand him the search itself: "who owns minerals in section 35-158-99?" and he runs it against the live record and answers with real owners and acreage. He's included on every plan; searches he runs count toward your monthly quota just like searches in the app.