Powder River Basin Mineral Rights

Coal, coalbed methane, and now horizontal oil have all taken turns in the Powder River, and we buy interests tied to every era of it.

The Powder River Basin across northeast Wyoming and southeast Montana — Campbell, Converse, Johnson, and Sheridan counties are the core — has one of the more layered development histories of any basin we buy in. It's the largest coal-producing region in the country, it was a major coalbed methane play in the 1990s and 2000s, and more recently operators have been drilling horizontal oil wells targeting the Turner, Niobrara, Sussex, and Parkman formations stacked above the coal seams.

That layering means your mineral interest here could be tied to any one of several very different development eras, and we start by figuring out which one actually applies to you before we talk numbers.

Where the current activity is

Converse County has been the center of recent horizontal oil development, with operators running Turner and Niobrara wells and generating some of the strongest results in the basin over the last several years. Campbell County, historically the coalbed methane and coal capital of the basin, also sees continued horizontal oil interest in parts of the county.

We prioritize acreage near this active horizontal development, since that's where near-term drilling upside is real rather than speculative.

The coalbed methane legacy, and honest pricing on it

A huge population of Powder River coalbed methane wells from the 1990s and 2000s boom are still producing, though at a fraction of their peak rates, and many have been shut in entirely as gas prices made them uneconomic. We buy these legacy interests, but we price them almost entirely off current, actual production, not off memories of what coalbed methane paid during the boom.

If your check has shrunk dramatically or stopped altogether compared to what your parents used to receive, that's a common story here, and we'll show you what the well is producing today rather than pricing off history that no longer reflects reality.

How we underwrite the horizontal oil upside

Where your interest sits in or near the Converse County horizontal fairway, we look at how many of the stacked oil-bearing formations — Turner, Niobrara, Sussex, Parkman — have been tested or developed under your specific unit, since a unit with multiple productive zones represents more total inventory than one where only a single formation has been drilled.

We also check whether coal seam and horizontal oil rights are unified under one ownership or split between different owners, since Powder River title sometimes separates coal rights from oil and gas rights entirely, and that split changes exactly what you're selling.

Ownership and surface use questions we handle

Ranching families across the Powder River often hold both surface and mineral ownership together, and many also have an active coal lease or a history of coal royalty income alongside oil and gas. We buy only the oil and gas mineral interest, and we're careful to document that a sale doesn't touch your coal rights or surface ownership unless you specifically intend to sell those too.

Federal minerals administered by the BLM are common here as well, and we handle that assignment process the same way we do in the Green River and Piceance basins, as a routine part of closing rather than a reason to lower the offer.