Permian Basin Title and Curative Crews
Delaware and Midland Basin drilling units routinely cross multi-section horizontal allocation paths, deep vs. shallow leasehold severances, and decades of operating assignments. When an operator needs a crew to run sovereignty chains or clear requirements ahead of spud or division orders, post the counties, section count, and start date on the call sheet below.
How Permian Basin title work differs from single-tract leasing
Most West Texas and Southeast New Mexico acreage sits inside rectangular railroad blocks and public school land surveys (such as T&P RR Co., H&TC RR Co., PSL, and University Lands in Texas, or Township-Range sections in Lea and Eddy Counties, New Mexico). While the survey grid is regular, the leasehold chain rarely is:
- Horizontal Pugh and retained-acreage severances: Older base leases held by vertical Wolfcamp, Bone Spring, Spraberry, or Strawn wells often contain retained-acreage clauses that sever depths below the stratigraphic equivalent of the deepest producing perforation or sever acreage outside proration units after continuous-development programs end.
- Working-interest and overriding-royalty benches: A single section may have four different operating rights owners across the Avalon, First and Second Bone Spring, and Wolfcamp A/B/C benches, created through partial assignments, farmout agreements, and joint operating agreements that were never summarized in a single county clerk instrument.
- Relinquishment Act and State Fee tracts: In Texas Public School Land (PSL) sections where the State reserved the minerals and the surface owner acts as the State's leasing agent under the Relinquishment Act, the crew must pull both the County Clerk chain and the Texas General Land Office (GLO) mineral file.
- New Mexico federal and state leases: In Lea and Eddy Counties, county courthouse records must be reconciled against Bureau of Land Management (BLM) serial register pages and New Mexico State Land Office assignment files to distinguish record title from operating rights.
What a Permian title and curative crew delivers
| Crew lane | Courthouse & agency records worked | Turned over to your land team |
|---|---|---|
| Sovereignty or limited-period runsheets | County Clerk grantor-grantee and tract indexes, abstract books, probate packets, and GLO patent files. | Chronological runsheet in your Excel template with Volume/Page or Instrument Number, book type, dates, parties, legal description, and indexed PDF instrument copies. |
| HBP and depth-severance schedules | Base oil and gas leases, partial assignments, retained-acreage releases, and Railroad Commission (RRC) or OCD well completion and proration filings. | Tract-by-tract leasehold and depth-bench ownership schedule showing which intervals remain held by production and which depths have reverted. |
| Mineral ownership reports (MOR) | Deed chains, mineral and royalty reservations, non-participating royalty interests (NPRIs), and executive-right severances. | Gross and net mineral acre tabulations, royalty and NPRI burdens, leasehold working interest, and net revenue interest (NRI) math ready for your examining attorney. |
| Curative execution | Requirement list from your examining attorney's drilling or division order opinion. | Recorded affidavits of heirship, probate transcripts filed in the county of the land, ratifications, stipulation and cross-conveyance instruments, and release of expired leases, tracked line by line against each requirement number. |
Scoping a Delaware or Midland Basin crew call
When you post a crew call for Permian title or curative work, include the details that control how many landmen the job needs:
- Counties and state: For example, Reeves, Loving, Ward, Winkler, Pecos, Culberson, Midland, Martin, Howard, Glasscock, Upton, Reagan, or Andrews County in Texas, or Lea and Eddy County in New Mexico.
- Section count and depth scope: Whether the crew is running all depths from sovereignty or focusing on specific target intervals and existing HBP leasehold chains.
- Deliverable standard: Whether your examining counsel requires full sovereignty runsheets with every instrument imaged, or supplemental runsheets updating prior opinions from a specific certification date.
- Curative backlog: If the call is for curative, roughly how many title requirements are open and whether they are primarily heirship/probate filings, unreleased prior leases, or working-interest stipulations.
Other crew guides on the board: East Texas and Haynesville landman crews, Acquisition due diligence defect review crews, and Pipeline and transmission ROW agents.