Between 2011 and 2014 the Mississippi Lime was the most hyped play in the country and lease bonuses in Woods, Alfalfa and Grant County reached numbers nobody had seen before. Then it collapsed. 7,033 wells are still producing, and the owners who leased at the top have heard nothing since.
For about three years the Mississippi Lime was the most talked about play in the United States. Lease bonuses in Woods, Alfalfa and Grant County reached levels northern Oklahoma had never seen. Then the thesis failed, the operators left, and the coverage stopped completely.
7,033 wells are still producing.
| County | Producing wells |
|---|---|
| Woods, OK | 1,283 |
| Alfalfa, OK | 1,108 |
| Garfield, OK | 697 |
| Barber, KS | 495 |
| Kay, OK | 334 |
| Ness, KS | 321 |
| Grant, OK | 315 |
| Harper, KS | 314 |
The play was drilled on the idea that a cheap horizontal well in a shallow weathered carbonate would behave like shale. It did not. These wells produce enormous volumes of water alongside the oil, and the cost of lifting and disposing of that water broke the economics at scale.
That history matters for one practical reason: it means your interest should be valued as a producing stream, not as an option on drilling that is not coming. Any buyer implying otherwise is selling you a story from 2012.
This is the most common way owners here misjudge their position, so we want to be direct about it.
A lease bonus paid in 2012 reflected competitive leasing during a land rush. It was a payment for the right to drill, made at a moment when several well funded companies were racing each other for acreage. Most of those companies no longer exist in the same form.
What your minerals are worth today is what the production under them is worth, plus whatever undrilled potential genuinely remains. That is a real number. It will not resemble the boom, and an honest buyer should show you how they got there rather than leaving you to compare their offer against a memory.
Beneath parts of Alfalfa, Grant and Garfield County, the Woodford Shale is a separate target that was never fully developed while everyone was chasing the Mississippian above it.
Whether you hold those depths, and whether a shallow producing well is holding them by production, is worth establishing before you price anything. It is the one place in this play where undrilled value is a real consideration rather than wishful thinking.
A great many Mississippi Lime leases signed in the boom expired with no well ever drilled.
Both Oklahoma and Kansas recognize perpetual mineral ownership. An expired lease returns the leasing rights to you; it does not touch your ownership. Those owners are unleased mineral owners, not former mineral owners, and unleased acreage is a legitimate asset to sell or to keep.
These wells produce a great deal of water, and lifting and disposal are expensive. Ordinarily those are production costs borne by the operator rather than post-production expenses chargeable against your royalty, and Oklahoma law is comparatively protective here.
If your statement shows deductions you do not understand, send it to us. We will tell you what every line is, free, and if we think something is wrong we will tell you that too. See the royalty statement decoder and royalty payment laws by state.
Well 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.
55
In the counties where we buy.
216
New drilling permits in our counties.
4
New wells turned to sales.
Statewide totals for Mississippi Lime. 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.
A weathered Mississippian carbonate with a porous chert zone on top. Horizontally drilled at scale from 2011, with high water production that turned out to be the play's undoing economically. Still producing across northern Oklahoma and southern Kansas.
The source rock below the Mississippian. In parts of Alfalfa, Grant and Garfield County the Woodford is a genuine separate target, and on some acreage it has never been drilled.
The deeper carbonates. The Arbuckle in particular matters here for an unusual reason: it is the disposal zone for the enormous volumes of produced water these wells make.
Older conventional production across the same counties, long predating the horizontal play, and still the source of many older royalty checks in the area.
Woods County has the most producing Mississippi Lime wells at roughly 1,283, then Alfalfa at 1,108, Garfield at 697, Barber County Kansas at 495, Kay at 334, Ness at 321, Grant at 315 and Harper County Kansas at 314.
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