What a Landman Actually Does

A landman finds out who owns what, secures the right to drill, and fixes the paperwork so the check goes to the right name.

The word covers several different jobs, and the confusion costs owners money. Some landmen never leave the courthouse. Some seldom enter one and spend their days talking with owners. Others sit at an operator's desk reviewing what the field crew brought back.

Below is what each piece of the work looks like, what a morning in the records room involves, and why one of these people might knock on your door.

A morning in the courthouse

The day starts when the clerk's office opens, with a legal description on a sheet of paper. From there the work is mechanical and exacting. Search the grantor index for the owner's name, the grantee index for the same name, and follow every hit forward and backward in time. Record the volume and page of each instrument, image it, and read it.

Older counties still keep deed volumes on shelves, and handwritten instruments from the early twentieth century need a patient eye. Newer records sit in an online index, but the index misses things. A misspelled surname or a bad legal description can hide a deed for years. Good landmen check the tax rolls and the probate files too, since heirship rarely lands in the deed index.

Run sheets and title opinions

The output of that morning is a run sheet: a dated list of every recorded instrument touching the tract, from the first conveyance to the present. A title attorney takes the run sheet and the copies and writes a title opinion that names the owners, their fractions, the leases in effect, and the requirements that must be satisfied before drilling.

Operators insist on a drilling title opinion before a well goes on a unit, because paying the wrong person is expensive. The landman is the one who builds the foundation under that opinion, so one missed deed can ripple through a whole unit.

Leasing: the part owners see

Lease landmen contact owners and negotiate the terms: bonus per net mineral acre, royalty fraction, primary term, and clauses such as pooling authority, retained acreage and depth limits. Bonus and royalty vary widely with the play and the moment. A lease keeps the minerals with the owner and gives the operator the right to develop them.

Most leases are signed after a few rounds of back and forth. A short memorandum of the lease gets recorded in the county so the world knows the minerals are tied up.

Landmen are paid by the day or the project, not by the size of the royalty they negotiate. That arrangement sometimes means the lease gets finished quickly. It rarely means the landman is working to maximize your terms, so a counteroffer on bonus or royalty is reasonable and common.

Curative, right-of-way and division orders

Curative work fixes defects the title opinion flagged. That can mean an affidavit of heirship, a corrective deed, a release of an old mortgage, or a signature from an owner who was missed. Curative takes a persuasive phone voice and a lot of follow-up.

Right-of-way landmen secure easements for pipelines, roads, power lines and tank batteries, and negotiate payment with the surface owner. Division order analysts, usually working inside an operator or a payor, convert the title opinion into the decimals that determine each owner's share of revenue. If you have received a division order, an analyst built that number.

Why one ends up on your porch

The common reasons are a well planned near your tract, an expiring lease, a title requirement that needs your signature, or a pipeline crossing your surface. Sometimes it is a lease buyer working an area before drilling begins, and the client may not be named yet. That is normal in the business, and it is also why you should ask questions.

Ask who the landman works for, what the document does, and whether it is a lease, a deed, a ratification, an easement or an affidavit. Ask for a copy to review at home. Do not sign on the hood of a truck. Your own attorney can read a lease in less time than it takes to regret one.