San Augustine County has ten rigs running, the twelfth highest count of any county in the United States, in a county with fewer than 600 producing wells. East Texas is where the Haynesville is actually growing, and the offers arriving there are being priced off wells that do not exist yet.
The Haynesville has moved. Its core was DeSoto Parish for a decade, and its growth edge is now East Texas, where operators have been redrawing the play's boundaries as gas demand from LNG export and power generation has climbed.
Berlin buys East Texas Haynesville minerals and royalties on both sides of the Louisiana line.
| County | Producing wells | Rigs | Permits, last 90 days |
|---|---|---|---|
| San Augustine | 577 | 10 | 101 |
| Panola | 6,233 | 8 | 110 |
| Harrison | 3,062 | 5 | 111 |
| Nacogdoches | 1,442 | 5 | 36 |
| Rusk | 3,913 | 3 | 43 |
| Shelby | 946 | 2 | 41 |
| Sabine | 26 | 0 | 9 |
San Augustine's ten rigs put it twelfth among all counties in the United States. It has fewer than 600 producing wells.
That ratio is the most extreme we see anywhere. It says the county is being built rather than harvested, and it has a direct consequence for what your minerals are worth.
Take your last twelve months of royalty income and apply a multiple. That is how nearly every offer you receive is calculated.
In San Augustine County, most owners' last twelve months of income came from a handful of legacy wells or from nothing at all, while ten rigs are drilling and 101 permits have been approved in 90 days. The arithmetic behind the offer cannot see a permit. It cannot see a rig. It cannot see the Bossier bench nobody has drilled.
On a mature single-zone field, an income multiple is a reasonable approximation. On acreage in active development it prices the wrong asset entirely.
Two things to ask any buyer, including us:
If a buyer will not break those out, they are pricing your check rather than your minerals.
Sabine has 26 producing wells and 9 permits. There is essentially nothing to price against.
That combination, no production history and new permits, is where non-producing minerals are worth the most and where owners have the least ability to know it. There is no check to multiply, so a mailer buyer's method produces a number near zero while the acreage may be worth a great deal. If you own in Sabine and someone has offered you something, find out what has been permitted near your section before you answer.
The same rock continues into DeSoto, Caddo, Sabine, Bossier, and Red River Parishes, and we buy on both sides. But Louisiana law is genuinely different in a way that matters:
Louisiana does not recognize perpetual mineral ownership. It uses a mineral servitude subject to prescription of nonuse, and a servitude can prescribe back to the landowner after ten years without production or drilling operations. Texas has no equivalent. A Texas mineral owner who does nothing for thirty years still owns their minerals; a Louisiana servitude owner in the same position may not.
If your family holds minerals on both sides of the line, they are not the same kind of asset and should not be valued as though they were. See Louisiana mineral rights.
Well, rig, and permit 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.
Deep, hot, high pressure dry gas with some of the highest initial rates in North America. In East Texas it sits deeper than on the Louisiana side, which is why the play only reached here as completion technology improved.
The stacked bench above the Haynesville. On a great deal of East Texas acreage the Bossier is a separate undrilled location that no income-based offer accounts for.
The legacy tight gas that produced across these counties for decades before anyone drilled a Haynesville well, and that still accounts for most of the wells on the ground.
The shallower carbonate targets, developed horizontally in parts of Shelby and Panola.
San Augustine has the most rigs. Harrison and Panola have the most permits. The play continues across the line into DeSoto, Caddo, Sabine, Bossier and Red River Parishes, where Louisiana prescription law changes what you own and how you keep it.
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