Bakken and Three Forks minerals in the core Williston Basin, priced off the wells rather than a mail merge. Plus the two North Dakota statutes that can quietly cost an absentee owner everything.
North Dakota has one of the largest royalty owner populations in the country and one of the weakest sets of online resources serving it. Search for how to sell Bakken minerals and the top results are forum threads. When user posts outrank every commercial page, Google is telling you that no adequate page exists. So we built one.
Berlin buys Bakken and Three Forks minerals and royalties in the core Williston Basin counties, and legacy conventional interests across the rest of the state. Most North Dakota owners we talk to inherited the interest and live a thousand miles from the nearest wellhead, which makes them the favorite target of high volume mailer buyers. Our approach is the opposite: fewer deals, real underwriting, and a valuation you can see, including what remaining infill locations on your spacing unit are worth.
North Dakota is one of a minority of states where a severed mineral interest can be extinguished by doing nothing.
Under N.D.C.C. chapter 38-18.1, a mineral interest that goes unused for 20 years preceding the first publication of notice is deemed abandoned, and title vests in the surface owner after the statutory notice and quiet title process. Section 38-18.1-02 sets the rule; sections 38-18.1-06 and 38-18.1-06.1 govern the procedure.
What counts as "use" under section 38-18.1-03 is broader than people fear, and includes:
That last one is the escape hatch, and it is cheap. A statement of claim recorded with the county recorder before the 20 years expires, stating the owner's name and address and the legal description, preserves the interest. Filing one costs a recording fee.
If you inherited a North Dakota interest that has never produced, has never been leased, and has never had anything recorded against it, this is the most urgent item on your list, ahead of any decision about selling. We will tell you where you stand for free, and we will tell you even if the answer means we cannot buy it.
North Dakota's pooling statute, N.D.C.C. section 38-08-08, is unusually favorable to unleased owners and almost nobody publishes what it actually says.
| Your situation | What the statute gives you |
|---|---|
| Unleased, pooled before Aug 1, 2009 | Cost free royalty equal to the acreage weighted average royalty of leased tracts in the unit, never less than one eighth |
| Unleased, pooled after Jul 31, 2009 | That acreage weighted average, or a cost free 16 percent at the operator's election |
| Leased, elects not to participate | Charged 200 percent of their share of reasonable actual costs |
| Unleased, does not participate | Charged 50 percent, and only after a good faith unsuccessful attempt to lease |
Two things follow. First, a cost free 16 percent is a better royalty than many North Dakota owners negotiated in a lease, which means being unleased is not automatically the disaster owners assume. Second, the 200 percent penalty that people worry about applies to leased nonparticipating owners, not to unleased ones.
Compare Montana, where an unleased refusing owner is treated as owning a one eighth landowner royalty until costs are recovered under M.C.A. section 82-11-202. Same Bakken, same operators, different state line, materially different economics. That gap is exactly the kind of thing that should be priced into an offer, and rarely is.
Our pooling election calculator was built for Oklahoma orders but the arithmetic of comparing a royalty option against participating is the same exercise. If you are holding a North Dakota pooling notice, send it to Ask a Landman and we will read it free.
In Bice v. Petro-Hunt, L.L.C., 2009 ND 124, 768 N.W.2d 496, the North Dakota Supreme Court adopted the at the well rule and the work back method, and expressly rejected the first marketable product doctrine.
Practically, that means gathering, compression, processing, and transportation can be worked back out of the downstream sale price before your royalty is calculated, subject to what your lease says. North Dakota sits with Pennsylvania and against West Virginia, Colorado, and Wyoming on this question.
Because the rule defaults against the owner, your lease language carries more weight in North Dakota than in a first marketable product state. A lease that is silent produces a very different check than one with a real no deductions clause, and the difference compounds over a well's life. Our royalty statement decoder walks through the line items, and our letter templates include a certified mail demand for an itemized accounting.
Authority is N.D.C.C. chapters 57-51, 57-51.1, and 57-51.2, and N.D.A.C. sections 81-09-02 and 81-09-03.
If your interest lies along Lake Sakakawea or the historical Missouri River channel, there is a second statute worth knowing. N.D.C.C. chapter 61-33.1 settled the long running dispute over minerals under the historical riverbed, providing that the State's sovereign mineral ownership extends only to the historical channel up to the ordinary high water mark, and that the State holds no claim above it. That determination returned substantial royalty sums to private owners.
If you own along the river and your royalties were suspended or paid to the State during the dispute, it is worth checking whether money is owed to you. See unclaimed royalties.
Last reviewed August 2026. Statutes and rates change, and the gas gross production tax rate changes every July. Berlin Royalties is a mineral buyer and a landman shop, not a law firm or a tax advisor, and this page is general information rather than advice about your interest.
Also see our Bakken and Williston Basin page, which compares the North Dakota and Montana rules side by side.
Send a check stub, a lease, a division order, or just a county and a family name. We will locate the interest, tell you whether the 20 year clock is a problem, tell you what it is worth and how we got there, and tell you honestly if holding beats selling. Free, and no obligation.
Out of state heirs should also read out of state mineral owners and transferring inherited minerals.
The play that redefined American oil. Mature now, with predictable declines and continued infill drilling in the core, which makes valuation a real exercise rather than a guess.
The bench below the Bakken, adding drilling inventory and value under much of the same acreage. First, second, and third bench potential varies sharply by township.
Older vertical production across the basin margins and Bottineau and Renville. Small checks, long lives, and title chains that have not been touched in decades.
The core four counties are our focus, but we review interests across the Williston Basin and the North Dakota conventional areas.
Everything a North Dakota 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 North Dakota guideThe things owners here most often wish they had read first. All free, none of it gated.
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