Sell your Tioga County mineral rights.

Tioga County is dry gas Marcellus in north central Pennsylvania, producing roughly 40.2 million Mcf in a recent month, about 6 percent of the state total and sixth statewide. Seneca Resources and Repsol are the dominant operators, and the county has continued to appear in DEP permit issuances, so this is a mature area that is still being drilled.

Two local features complicate title in ways that are worth money to get right.

First, Tioga State Forest covers large blocks where the Commonwealth holds minerals, with scattered private reservations inside. Establishing which is which is the first step on any tract.

Second, Blossburg's 19th century coal and coke history left coal severances and corporate timber and coal reservations throughout the chains. Combined with the Dunham Rule, under which a Pennsylvania deed reserving minerals without naming oil or gas presumptively does not reserve them, what a family actually owns here is frequently not what they believe. That cuts both ways and we have seen it go both ways.

The shallow Devonian sandstone well population also means shallow versus deep rights language matters. Old shallow leases were not always released, and rights at different depths can sit in different hands.

As everywhere in Pennsylvania, deductions are lawful under Kilmer v. Elexco, so we read your lease before quoting anything and show you the value with and without them. Send the lease and a statement.