Benton, West Frankfort, Sesser: we buy minerals and royalties throughout Franklin County, a coal county with Dale Consolidated oil underneath and deep Devonian tests going down in 2026.
Franklin County is coal first and oil second, and that order matters to a mineral owner, because the deeds that sold the coal to the mining companies a century ago decide today who owns the gas coming out of the old workings. The oil is a separate story: Dale Consolidated and the Benton-area fields paying small royalties since 1940, plus, unusually for Illinois, a run of 5,000 to 6,500 foot wells permitted in 2025 and 2026.
What produces here. The Illinois Petroleum Resources Board puts Franklin County at 288,257 barrels for calendar 2025, sixth in the state, down from 336,748 in 2024. The oil comes from Dale Consolidated, discovered in 1940 and shared with Hamilton and Saline counties, and from Benton, West Frankfort Consolidated, Whittington, Sesser Consolidated, Thompsonville North, Ewing East, Akin and Zeigler, with pay in the Tar Springs, Aux Vases, Ste. Genevieve, Ullin, Salem, Warsaw and Devonian; the ISGS database holds about 975 unplugged oil producer records in the county. The operators you will see on checks and in the county records include Gesell's Pump Sales and Service of Whittington, Stewart Producers of Mount Vernon, Campbell Energy, Lampley Oil, R and S Operating and Optim Exploration. The IDNR weekly permit logs show 11 oil well permits in 2025 and at least 15 in 2026 through late October, 10 of them Gesell's, and the targets are deep for Illinois: U.S. Steel lease wells to the Bailey at 4,990 feet near Benton in July and August 2026, and the Pickens 29 to the Spechts Ferry at 6,490 feet permitted October 6, 2026. Keyrock Energy of Beckley, West Virginia also permitted 11 coal mine methane wells in 2025 and three more in 2026, including the ZM-1 7 in the Herrin coal on October 21, 2026, gas from abandoned mines rather than oil wells.
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 Illinois.
Dale Consolidated, discovered in 1940 and shared with Hamilton and Saline counties, plus Benton, West Frankfort Consolidated, Whittington, Sesser Consolidated, Thompsonville North, Ewing East, Akin and Zeigler, with pay in the Tar Springs, Aux Vases, Ste. Genevieve, Ullin, Salem and Warsaw.
The 2025 and 2026 permits here are unusual for Illinois: Bailey wells near 5,000 feet and Spechts Ferry wells to 6,490 feet on the U.S. Steel and Pickens leases south of Benton.
Keyrock Energy pulls methane from the Herrin coal in abandoned mines under permits that say CMG, not O. That gas belongs to whoever owns the coal and gas estate, which is often not the oil royalty owner.
Wherever your tract sits in Franklin County, we will research it free and value it with the work shown.
We buy in every Illinois county, including ones without a page here. See the full county index or the Illinois overview.
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 Illinois, what heirs should do.
What Illinois mineral rights are worth, information only, with this month's activity. Unclaimed Illinois royalties: where the money goes and how an heir claims it.
Everything a Illinois 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 Illinois guideThe things owners here most often wish they had read first. All free, none of it gated.
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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.