16,731 wells are producing in Kentucky and there is not one active rig in the state. Pike, Floyd, Knott, Letcher, Martin and Perry County hold tens of thousands of small family interests, split across generations, tangled up with coal severances, and almost entirely ignored by mineral buyers.
Kentucky has 16,731 producing wells and no active rig anywhere in the state.
We will not build you a growth story out of that, because there is not one. What eastern Kentucky has is something different and genuinely valuable to understand: tens of thousands of small family mineral interests, most of them producing modest amounts of gas reliably, almost none of which any mineral buyer has ever bothered to put a number on.
| County | Producing wells |
|---|---|
| Pike | 3,328 |
| Floyd | 1,252 |
| Knott | 1,193 |
| Letcher | 1,079 |
| Martin | 800 |
| Perry | 799 |
| Clay | 756 |
| Knox | 668 |
The mineral buying industry follows rigs. Kentucky has none, so the marketing goes to Texas and Louisiana instead.
The consequence for you is not that your interest is worthless. It is that when an offer does arrive, it tends to be a low number with no reasoning behind it, made on the safe assumption that you have no competing figure to compare it against.
That makes a second opinion worth more in Kentucky than in almost any state we work in. We will give you one free, with the arithmetic shown, and we will tell you if the offer you already have is the better one.
Coal was severed across these counties in the late 1800s and early 1900s, frequently by broad form deeds whose terms were litigated for generations and eventually addressed by a state constitutional amendment.
The practical result is that an eastern Kentucky family may own:
Your property tax bill will not tell you which. The recorded chain will.
We will pull that chain and tell you what you actually own, free, whether or not you ever sell us anything. For a great many Kentucky families this is the useful thing we can do, and it has nothing to do with buying anything.
Where coal and gas have been severed to different owners, the question of who owns gas produced from a coal seam has been litigated across Appalachia with mixed results, and the answer often turns on the exact wording of a very old instrument.
If your interest involves coalbed methane and your chain is split between coal and gas owners, that is a question for a Kentucky lawyer rather than for any buyer's confident assurance, including ours. We will tell you when we think you are in that situation.
Diversified Energy operates roughly 7,137 producing wells in Kentucky, far more than anyone else. Vinland Energy runs about 1,132, Mountain V 831, K Petroleum 459, Jetta 443, Primrose 377 and Greylock 339.
Diversified's entire model is acquiring and operating very large numbers of mature, low rate wells. If your check changed hands to them, that is routine and nothing happened to your interest.
These are shallow Devonian shale gas wells, mostly vertical, mostly decades old, producing small volumes very steadily. Valued honestly, that is a long stream discounted at a sensible rate. It is not nothing, and it is not a fortune, and you deserve to be told which.
Interests fractured across three or four generations, unprobated estates, heirs nobody has tracked down: that is the ordinary condition of mineral title in eastern Kentucky, not an unusual problem.
We have no minimum interest size, we cure title problems at our own cost, and we do the research free. If the honest answer is that your interest is worth very little and you should simply keep the check coming, that is what we will tell you.
Well and operator counts are sourced from Enverus and current as of August 2026. Berlin Royalties is a mineral buyer and a landman shop in Tulsa, not a law firm or a tax advisor, and this page is general information rather than advice about your interest. Kentucky coal and broad form deed questions are genuinely complex and worth a Kentucky lawyer's time when real money is involved.
0
In the counties where we buy.
16
New drilling permits in our counties.
0
New wells turned to sales.
Statewide totals for Eastern Kentucky. Source: Enverus, as of 2026-08-17. Rigs are currently active; permits are those approved in the last 90 days; completions are wells reporting first production in the last 90 days, which lags reporting by state. Activity like this moves mineral value. If it is happening near you, find out what your interest is worth before you take anyone's offer.
The backbone of Appalachian gas production here, drilled vertically across the eastern counties for the better part of a century. Very low rates, very long lives, and thousands of wells still on line.
The shallower sandstone and carbonate targets. The Berea saw a modest horizontal revival in the northeast of the region and is a genuine separate interval on some acreage.
Gas produced from coal seams, which raises an ownership question specific to this region: whether coalbed methane belongs to the coal owner or the gas owner, and what your particular chain of title says about it.
Not oil and gas, but inseparable from title here. Coal was severed across eastern Kentucky long before anyone drilled for gas, and those old severances shape what a family actually owns today more than any geological question does.
Pike County has by far the most producing wells at roughly 3,328, then Floyd at 1,252, Knott at 1,193, Letcher at 1,079, Martin at 800, Perry at 799, Clay at 756 and Knox at 668.
Everything a Kentucky 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 Kentucky guideFree, 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.