Columbiana, Alabaster, Pelham, Helena: we buy minerals and royalties throughout Shelby County, the Gurnee coalbed methane field under the Birmingham suburbs.
Shelby County is Birmingham's southern suburbs sitting on top of the Cahaba coal field, and under Alabaster, Pelham, and Helena are several hundred coalbed methane wells that most of the people above them have never heard of. Where the minerals were split from the surface before the subdivisions came, the royalties go to the descendants of whoever held the land then, scattered across the country and often unaware a check is owed.
What produces here. Shelby County produced 70.7 million cubic feet of coalbed methane and no oil in August 2026 from 306 Gurnee field wells, 184 operated by Urban Oil and Gas Group and 122 by Calera Gas, held in the Cahaba I and Cahaba II units. The field was drilled from 1988 into the 2000s by Gurnee Gas, McKenzie Methane, CDX Gas, and GeoMet, with more than 400 permits in the 2000s alone, before Urban and Calera took it over; the last new permits were two Urban wells in June 2011. Nothing has been permitted in Shelby County since, and the Board's last 50 permits as of early November 2026 included none here; the coalbed methane rigs that Warrior Met Coal Gas and Keyrock Energy are running are in Jefferson and Tuscaloosa counties.
Whatever you own here, producing royalties, non-producing acreage, or an inherited fraction split among family, we will identify it from whatever paperwork you have, value it off the actual wells and activity, and show you the reasoning with the offer. Free, no obligation, and no pressure: if keeping it is the right answer, we will say so. Inherited it? Start with inherited mineral rights in Alabama.
The Cahaba coal field's gas: more than 800 wells permitted in Shelby County between 1988 and 2011, held in the Cahaba I and Cahaba II units, now operated by Urban Oil and Gas Group and Calera Gas with about 300 still reporting.
Wherever your tract sits in Shelby County, we will research it free and value it with the work shown.
We buy in every Alabama county, including ones without a page here. See the full county index, or start with how to sell Alabama mineral rights.
Whether you need a probate, the affidavit and transfer on death routes, the dormant mineral rules, and where unpaid royalties go: inherited mineral rights in Alabama, what heirs should do.
What Alabama mineral rights are worth, information only, with this month's activity. Unclaimed Alabama royalties: where the money goes and how an heir claims it.
Everything a Alabama owner needs in one place: who owns what under state law, how royalties must be paid and by when, what a buyer can and cannot deduct, the tax treatment of a sale, and the deadlines that quietly cost people their minerals. Free, and no sign-up.
Read the Alabama guideThe things owners here most often wish they had read first. All free, none of it gated.
Free, no obligation, and no pressure. We reply within one business day, usually faster.
Prefer the phone? Call or text 918-984-1645 and you will get Stephen, the owner, not a call center. If we miss you, we text back the same day.
In a hurry? Text a photo of a royalty check stub to 918-984-1645 and our preliminary offer puts a written number in front of you within about two business days. It holds for 7 while you decide.