Kern County, Long Beach, Ventura, the Santa Maria Valley: California royalties have paid families for a century, and we still buy them when almost nobody else will.
Berlin buys California minerals and royalties, from the giant steamfloods of Kern County to town-lot fractions under Long Beach. That sentence alone separates us from most of the industry, so it deserves an explanation.
The headlines are real. California passed a 3,200-foot setback law for new wells near homes and schools, spent several years issuing almost no new drilling permits, and its largest city voted to phase out drilling entirely. Chevron moved its headquarters to Texas. Operators consolidated, with Aera folding into California Resources. Buyers who price minerals off a drilling story looked at all that and left the state.
Here is what the headlines miss: California royalty income mostly does not come from new drilling. It comes from shallow, heavy-oil fields under steamflood and waterflood that decline at a few percent a year, some of them producing since before Oklahoma was a state. Midway-Sunset has produced for more than a century. Kern River was discovered in 1899 and still produces. A royalty check from these fields is one of the most durable income streams in American oil, and its value depends on the wells, not on a permit that was never going to be filed under your lot anyway.
The state's posture is bending toward pragmatism. When refinery closures threatened California's fuel supply, Sacramento passed legislation in late 2025 reopening a permitting pathway in Kern County, and state regulators began approving new wells again in numbers not seen in years. Nobody should sell or hold based on one legislative season, but the direction matters: the state has discovered it still needs its own barrels.
We value the wells: current production, decline, operator quality, and your decimal. Then we apply a discount for California's political risk, and we show you that discount explicitly instead of hiding it inside a lowball. You see the number we would pay for identical wells in Oklahoma, and what we subtract for Sacramento. That is the difference between a risk adjustment and a hope that you will not ask questions.
If you own minerals or royalties anywhere in California, producing or not, inherited or bought, whole or a 1/384th town-lot fraction, send it through the free valuation form or call or text 918-984-1645. We will research it free, tell you what it is worth with the work shown, and tell you plainly if you are better off keeping it.
Kern County's giants: Midway-Sunset, Kern River, Belridge, Cymric, Lost Hills, and Elk Hills, plus Coalinga in Fresno County. Shallow heavy oil under steamflood that declines slower than almost anything in Texas or Oklahoma.
Wilmington under Long Beach, Signal Hill, Inglewood, Santa Fe Springs, Brea-Olinda: urban fields with town-lot minerals split into tiny fractions, and royalty checks that have outlived every prediction of their demise.
The Ventura Avenue field and its neighbors along the Santa Clara River valley, structurally spectacular and still producing after a hundred years.
Orcutt, Cat Canyon, and the Santa Maria Valley fields of Santa Barbara County, heavy oil country with a long history and patient decline.
Kern is the heart of it and Los Angeles the most misunderstood. We review California interests statewide, including counties not listed here.
Everything a California 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.
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