Upton County sits on the eastern shelf of the Midland Basin, and if you're holding minerals here the Spraberry-Wolfcamp stack under your acreage is probably why an operator has been calling.
Rankin is the county seat, McCamey sits on the western edge near the Crockett County line, and both towns have watched the Midland Basin boom run through in waves since the horizontal era started around 2010. Upton County isn't the densest part of the play, but it's squarely in it, and Wolfcamp bench development has pulled operators like Pioneer's legacy acreage, now folded into ExxonMobil, and Diamondback across a lot of these sections.
If you've got a deed, a division order, or just an old royalty statement with a well name on it, send it over. We will tell you where your interest sits relative to current drilling and what that's worth in plain terms, not a teaser number meant to get you on the phone.
Where your acreage sits in the stack matters more than the county line
The Midland Basin isn't one flat reservoir, it's stacked benches, Lower Spraberry, Wolfcamp A, B, and sometimes C, each one a separate target that can get its own lateral. Two tracts a mile apart in Upton County can have very different development histories depending on how many of those benches have been drilled and how recently.
That's why we ask for your well name or API number before we quote anything. A section held by production since 2012 with only one bench developed still has upside an operator may drill into later. A section with four stacked laterals already in it is closer to fully developed, and its value shows up more in current cash flow than in future potential.
Spacing units and pooling out here run wide
Permian spacing units in this part of the Midland Basin commonly run 640 acres or larger, sometimes pooled across multiple sections for longer laterals. If you own a small fractional interest, your royalty share reflects your percentage of a big unit, not a tiny piece of a tiny one. That math matters when you're comparing an offer to what your neighbor with a whole section might be quoted.
We pull the unit designation and current operator from the Railroad Commission records alongside the Upton County Clerk's deed records in Rankin. Between the two, we can usually reconstruct your net mineral acre position without you having to dig through a filing cabinet.
Ranch land and split estate ownership
A lot of Upton County minerals trace back to ranching families who held both surface and minerals for generations before selling or leasing the mineral estate separately. Split estate is the norm out here, not the exception, so don't assume you need to own the surface to have a valid claim, or that owning the surface means you automatically hold the minerals underneath it.
Heirship interests are also common. If your grandparents' royalty interest got divided among children and grandchildren over the decades, we can usually buy an individual heir's share without requiring the whole family to sign off together, as long as your piece of the chain of title is documented.
Selling now versus waiting on the next lease cycle
Activity in the Midland Basin runs in cycles tied to oil prices and operator capital budgets, and Upton County has seen both quiet stretches and busy ones. If a section near you hasn't been touched in a few years, that doesn't mean it never will be, but it does mean you're taking on the uncertainty of when. A lump-sum sale trades that uncertainty for a number in hand today, which is the right call for some owners and not others depending on your situation.
We would rather lose a deal by telling you to hold than close one you'll regret. If your section still has strong odds of getting drilled soon based on nearby permits, we will say so plainly, even if that means you decide to wait.
What we need from you to get started
A copy of your deed, your most recent division order, or even just an old check stub with an operator's name on it is enough for us to start pulling records. We will cross-reference that against the Upton County Clerk's files and current Railroad Commission activity, then come back to you with a specific range grounded in what's actually happening on and around your acreage, not a form-letter estimate.
Texas Owner Questions
How do you know which Wolfcamp bench is producing under your Upton County interest?
Send us the well name, lease name, or API number from your division order and we will pull the completion records. That tells us which bench or benches are currently producing and whether others remain undeveloped, which factors directly into what your interest is worth.
Your family's interest has never been leased. Can you still sell it?
Yes. Unleased minerals can be sold outright, and in some cases they're worth pursuing precisely because a future lease bonus and royalty terms haven't been locked in yet. We'll evaluate it based on nearby activity and formation depth.
Do you buy both surface and mineral interests?
We focus on mineral and royalty interests. If your family also owns the surface estate, that's a separate conversation, but it doesn't complicate a mineral-only sale.
What documents speed up the process?
A copy of your deed or the document showing how you inherited the interest, plus your most recent division order or royalty statement, gets us most of the way to a firm number without back-and-forth.
