Sell Mineral Rights in Mobile County, AL

Mobile County has produced oil since 1955, when the Citronelle Field came in as the largest onshore discovery in Alabama history, and the paperwork behind that production has been splitting through estates ever since.

Mobile County is unusual among Alabama counties in that most mineral owners here don't have to be told their ground has history — they already know it, at least in outline. The Citronelle Field, discovered in the mid-1950s in the Rankin and Donovan sands, turned this county into the center of Alabama's onshore oil industry for a generation, and the Chunchula and Hatters Pond fields to the north kept drilling crews busy well after Citronelle's peak. What most owners don't know as precisely is what their own interest looks like today — whether it's still in a producing unit, whether the servitude or lease from a parent or grandparent ever lapsed, and what a current royalty check would actually support if someone made a fair offer.

We work as a family office buying mineral and royalty interests directly, and Mobile County is one of the places we spend the most time in the courthouse. The Probate Court in downtown Mobile holds the deed and probate records going back generations, and for anything touching the Citronelle trend we also cross-check unitization orders on file with the state. That's the work that has to happen before a number means anything, and we do it ourselves rather than quoting off a map.

The Citronelle Field and What Came After

Citronelle produced for decades on secondary and tertiary recovery long after the easy oil was gone, which means a lot of the mineral and royalty interests under the field have been held by production continuously since the 1950s. That's a meaningfully different situation from raw, undeveloped acreage — there's an actual production and payment history to underwrite. Chunchula and Hatters Pond, north and east of Citronelle, added their own layers of leasing activity through the 1970s and 1980s, and some of that acreage has been re-leased more than once as operators changed hands.

If your family's interest sits inside or near one of these fields, the practical question isn't whether the ground has ever produced — it almost certainly has, at some point — it's whether the well or unit paying you today is still economic, and how that shows up in the royalty statement you're currently getting, if you're getting one at all.

Split Estates and Old Timber Land

A good share of Mobile County's rural acreage passed through large timber and land companies for much of the twentieth century, and a fair number of those companies severed the mineral estate from the surface before selling off the land. If your family bought or inherited surface ground in the county, there's a real chance you don't own what's under it — or the reverse, that a grandparent kept the minerals when the surface was sold and nobody since has tracked that reservation forward. Sorting out which side of that split you're on is exactly the kind of title question we run down before we ever put a number in front of someone.

Heirs' property is common here too. Mobile County has a long history of land passing informally through families without a will, which leaves multiple cousins, siblings, or in-laws as tenants in common on the same mineral interest, sometimes without any of them realizing how many co-owners there actually are until a landman or buyer starts asking.

What Actually Sets the Value

Value on Mobile County minerals depends heavily on where the tract sits relative to Citronelle, Chunchula, and Hatters Pond, whether the unit is still producing or has watered out, and what the last several royalty checks actually show. We don't work off a flat county-wide number — a producing interest inside an active Citronelle unit and an unproven fraction on the county's edge are priced very differently, and both depend on current market activity, not a figure we quote from memory.

Probate Court Records and How We Use Them

The Mobile County Probate Court holds the deed, conveyance, and probate books we pull before making an offer, and for interests touching Citronelle we also check the field's unitization and pooling orders with the state oil and gas board. That combination tells us what was actually conveyed, whether a later heir's transfer was ever recorded, and whether the interest as described on paper still matches what your family believes it owns. We do that research ourselves rather than asking you to produce it, which is usually the slowest part of any deal we don't handle in-house.

ALABAMA RECORD CHECK

Resolve the Record Question Before Comparing the Number

Each answer points back to an Alabama deed, estate description, lease term, paid decimal, production line, or written condition that can be checked.

your family's royalty check from a Citronelle-area well has been getting smaller for years. Is it still worth selling?

Often, yes. Declining production doesn't mean an interest is worthless — it means the value reflects where the well is in its decline curve, and we price against your actual recent statements rather than an old high-water-mark figure.

We think a great-grandparent sold the minerals when the timber company bought the land decades ago. How do we find out?

That's a title question, and it's one we run down at the Mobile County Probate Court before we ever talk numbers. Send us the legal description or an old deed if you have one, and we'll tell you plainly what the record shows.

There are six of us who inherited this interest together. Do we all have to agree to sell?

Not necessarily as a single transaction. Co-owners can sell individually or as a group, and we can structure an offer either way once we know how the interest was actually divided among the heirs.

Do you buy interests that have never produced?

We do consider undeveloped acreage near active fields like Citronelle or Hatters Pond, though it's priced very differently than a producing royalty. Send us the details and we'll give you an honest read on where it stands.