Find the lease
A stub names the property the check is for, in the operator’s words. Look for the lease name, and for a Railroad Commission district and lease number. The state identifies an oil lease or a gas well by district and number, so those two are the sure match: more than half of the leases on this site share their name and county with another lease.
Search the name on the lease lookup, then check the district and lease number on the page against the stub. If your stub has neither, the county page lists every lease in the county, A to Z. Once you are on the right page, the head of the page shows the operator, county and field the state records for it.
Pick the month the check covers
Royalty is paid on production, and a stub shows two dates: the month the oil and gas came out of the ground, and the date of the check. Use the production month. The check usually arrives a month or two later.
The state publishes lease production two to three months after the month it covers, and it revises recent months. Each update of a lease page re-pulls the latest three months. If the month on your stub is newer than the last month on the page, the state has not published it yet. If it is older, it is in the ledger at the foot of the page, newest first.
Get your decimal
Your decimal interest is the small number on your division order that says what share of the whole lease, all eight eighths of it, is yours. It comes from your royalty fraction, your net mineral acres and the acres in the unit:
An example decimal
Royalty fraction1/4
Your net mineral acres5
Acres in the unit1,280
1/4 × 5 ÷ 1,2800.00097656
Your division order states yours, and the stub prints it as decimal interest, NRI or DOI. The decimal guide shows how to rebuild it from your lease.
Multiply the volume
Take the Oil sold volume for the month in the ledger and multiply it by your decimal. The answer should match the barrels on your stub. For gas, take Gas sold in the ledger, which is the gas sent to a transmission line (code 2) or a plant (code 3), and multiply that. Oil is in barrels (bbl). Gas is in thousand cubic feet (mcf).
Example, not a real lease
Oil sold, one month12,400 bbl
× decimal 0.0009765612.11 bbl
Gas sold, same month31,000 mcf
× decimal 0.0009765630.27 mcf
If your stub shows about 12 barrels and 30 mcf, the volume line matches the state. If it shows far less, the month is worth a question. Sales and reporting months can differ a little, so a small gap is normal. A month the state has no report for is marked with a red cross on the chart and a red row in the ledger, and the page says so instead of guessing.
Wells are listed on the page too. The API number is the state’s ID for a well. Older leases and some gas wells are filed without well records, and their production is still reported at lease level.
Read where the gas went
Every month the operator tells the state where each mcf of gas went, using a code. The code decides how your gas is paid. The lease page groups them into five:
| Group | What happened to the gas | What to look for on the stub |
|---|---|---|
| Processing plant (3) | Sent to a gas plant that pulls out natural gas liquids. | Plant products, and possibly processing fees. |
| Transmission line (2) | Sold straight into a pipeline without processing. | Processing fees would be worth asking about. |
| Lease fuel (1) | Burned to run equipment on the lease. Not sold, so it pays no royalty. | A few percent is normal. |
| Other (5 to 8) | Gas lift, repressure, carbon black or another use the operator reported. | Ask what the use was if the share is large. |
| Flared (4) | Burned off or vented, not sold. It pays no royalty. | More than 3% in a month is worth watching. |
Where the gas goes decides how it is paid: processed gas can carry plant products and processing fees, gas sold straight to a pipeline usually does not. A lease that moves from a plant to a line, or one where flaring rises, can change a check with no change in output. The ledger marks any month above 3% flared. The disposition codes guide covers all eight codes.
Check the operator
The operator runs the wells and pays your royalty. The lease page shows who the state lists as operator each month, on a timeline. When the operator changes, payments often slip for a month or two, and a new operator sometimes holds royalty in suspense until its records are in order.
The question to ask
The Railroad Commission shows this lease moved to a new operator. Is my payment for the months around the change in suspense, and when will it be paid?
The company on the stub is not always the operator on the state record: a purchaser or a payor can pay on the operator’s behalf. Ask the owner relations department named on the stub. If your statements skip or shrink around a change, that is the place to start. Texas operator changes lists who took over whose leases in the last 24 months.
Who buys the oil and gas
The operator files a Form P-4 with the Railroad Commission naming the companies authorised to gather and buy the oil and gas from the lease. The buyer’s price is the one your royalty is figured on. A listed company is authorised to move or buy the production; the state does not say what it paid. When the list changes, compare the price line on the stub before and after.
Same lease, new buyer. Compare the price line.
The unit and its acres
Your decimal is your net acres over the unit acres, so the acres on the operator’s drilling permits are the number to hold your division order against. Each well can have its own unit, and the decimal for one well does not have to equal the decimal for another. When the permits on a lease state different acreage, use the acres from your own division order for the well you own in.
The acres are what the operator filed on its permits. They are not a survey. The unit decimal checker works out the decimal for a unit you name.
Wells that share a unit
Some horizontal wells run under more than one lease. The operator then splits the well’s production between the leases by an agreed formula, often by acres or by the length of pipe under each one, and each lease reports its own share. A stub that names a well, or a pooled unit, can therefore show a different volume from the page of the one lease you looked up.
When the numbers do not line up, ask the operator which leases the well is allocated across and what share yours gets. Then look up each of those leases and add the shares. The lease page shows only what the state recorded for that one lease.
Compare with the field and county
The Railroad Commission assigns every lease to a field, the underground pool or formation it produces from. A field can cross county lines and hold leases from many operators, and leases in one field often move together because they draw on the same rock. The field pages and the county pages add up every lease in them, so they are a fair yardstick for one lease.
If your lease fell sharply and the rest of its field did not, that is worth a question to the operator. If the whole field fell, the cause is more likely the rock or the price than your check.
Prices and the estimator
The state records volumes, not prices. The lease page prices oil at the WTI Cushing spot and gas at the Henry Hub spot, monthly, both from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Type your decimal into the estimator and it multiplies the state’s sold volumes by it and prices them at those two benchmarks. It runs in your browser, and nothing you type leaves it.
It is an estimate, not your check. It ignores gathering and processing fees, taxes, plant products and the price your operator actually gets, and regional gas prices are often below Henry Hub. Use it as a ceiling to compare against.
Some operators are owned by public companies, and public companies report the average price they realize each quarter. The lease page shows those figures with a link to each filing on SEC EDGAR. They are an average across everything the company operates, not the price on your lease, so treat them as context for the price line, not as a target.
Have a stub in front of you? Upload it and we make these comparisons for every month at once, and give you the question to ask.