Royalty Appraisal – Finding an Appraiser

Oil Royalty Appraisal

If you have ever been tasked with getting an appraisal for oil and gas royalties or mineral rights, you understand the challenges of finding a firm that provides these kinds of services. Appraisals are often needed to determine a value for the sale of a company’s assets or the distribution of a trust’s holdings. Appraisals are used for bankruptcies if the debtor owned an interest in an oil and gas property. Many times a value is required for a family legal settlement, such as divorce or sibling dispute. On a larger scale, there may be a need to determine if royalties were properly paid by an oil and gas operating company. Certainly, one of the most common reasons an appraisal is needed is for estate tax purposes if the estate has minerals that are leased or oil and/or gas is being produced.

The difficulty in finding an appraiser is not necessarily because there are no engineers out there. Although there appears to certainly be a shortage as reported in this article by the Houston Chronicle: Industry Raids Academia for Oil Engineering Talent. But, the more likely reasons you may have a hard time finding an engineer qualified to provide these kinds of appraisal reports are because most of them either work in house for an oil and gas company or they are busy frying bigger fish for large asset management firms and banks. We are proud to report that Legacy Royalties Consulting provided 33 pro bono appraisals in 2014. These appraisals were used for Medicaid, Social Security, Veteran’s Benefits and a number of other purposes.

If you are looking for an oil and gas royalty appraisal, visit our Royalty Appraisal page on our website or call us at 800-950-6954.