This little deal I'm involved with now could very well be a too-good-to-be-true situation.  

Yesterday, after the man at the gas company said they were refusing to move the gate? I started doing research.  It took a few hours to finally come across the information I was looking for. The info I was searching out was property rights for the person that owns the land versus the person that retains the mineral rights to the land. The names are mineral rights holders and surface holders.  Surface holders are the people that own the land, mineral rights are the people that owned the land at one time, sold it off but held the rights to the underground minerals.

It turns out? The mineral rights owners have far more "dominance" than surface rights and are able to basically do whatever the hell they please.  At least, so it read on sites that were clearly on the side of the mineral rights holders. 

Trust me folks, I spent many hours researching this yesterday, I wanted to get to the bottom of this and find out whether I should even be trying to do this with that gas well there and these gas company people getting "confrontational" - their words and their increasingly aggressive behavior in the language they are using with me.  

I kept looking. I wanted to find anything that says anywhere that the mineral rights holder has the right to stop the surface right holder from accessing any part of his land.  I failed in that mission - as I hoped I would, but you can bet it wasn't because I wasn't trying. Google can be finnicky and you have to put the right words in the search field to find what you want. But if you don't know the terminology associated with whatever you are looking for, you may never find it. 

Still, my reading continued and I finally found sites that appeared to be more neutral - they weren't biased towards either side and were simply stating the facts as Texas law currently exists and a long standing history of Texas courts siding with mineral rights holders.

However, much of that - actually almost all of it - is referring to drilling operations and the rights the mineral owners have in bringing in vast amounts of equipment in order to search for the Texas T they are looking for.  The sob stories of landowners having their senses assailed with all of that equipment and the ensuing 24 hour per day noise, the lights, the odors, the dust, the amount of people they bring into those projects is actually shocking to people that didn't do any research whatsoever and weren't prepared for the vast intrusion into their daily lives that such operations invoke.

If you know me, you will know I don't get into much of anything without doing some sort of research first. In this case, it's been much more than other things I have gotten myself into - or got out of before I got into it after finding out certain information that led me to believe whatever it was/is isn't worth the hassle.

You see, in Texas, there is also an "Accommodation Doctrine". This is a synopsis I found of the doctrine, copied and pasted: "In 1971, Texas adopted the modern Accommodation Doctrine in an attempt to balance the scales between mineral and surface estates.³ It requires that owners of mineral estates reasonably accommodate the use of the surface estate.⁴ The doctrine is violated when the surface activities of the owners of the mineral estate are not “reasonably necessary” to extract the oil or gas if the mineral owner has other reasonable means of production available that will not interfere with the surface owner’s use. Simply put, if reasonable alternative drilling methods protecting the surface owner’s existing use are available, the mineral owner must make reasonable accommodations.^5"

 Is it reasonable for this company to have a gate over 900 feet from the entrance to their operation?  Your guess is as good as mine, but I would come to the distinct conclusion that it is not and hinders the ability for me to be able to use the "surface estate" in the manner I need to. It will cause me to have to use more land than I want to use for building driveways that are completely unnecessary.  

So, I wrote yet another letter - not having had received a reply from yesterday tho I didn't necessarily expect one - and informed him that, tho being no authority on the subject - it becomes clear to even the casual reader that mineral rights does not include barring land owners from their land.  And so on and so forth. Not worth going into all of it, I simply made my intentions clear and that I would use that road and that gate will be moved.  I offered no more ideas of spending more money to make them happy. They are filthy rich from these endeavors but they are also obviously quite greedy, as my readings have suggested.  

My intentions from all of this is to see how far they are willing to take this before I sign on the dotted lines and hand over almost 17 grand in down payment money.  If it appears that it's going to be too filled with threats, legal action and the like, I will rethink all of this and potentially move on.  I lose $100 in option money, my earnest money remains intact.  I think there is a short period on that earnest money tho, like 7 days or something, I need to re-read that contract, for I will have to make up my  mind about it before that option period ends. If the option period expires, I will not lose that earnest money, I will simply move on with the purchase and come-what-may.  

Whatever the case, I'm at the yard in Brownsville, got down here at almost 1:00 am, have about 25 more minutes before I can leave here - there were two empty trailers when I arrived and 2 empty trailers were sitting at the loves last night when I drove through there. I always drive through the Loves parking lot to see if any drivers are waiting in their tractors for empties before I go to the yard to drop the loaded trailer.  Of course, a driver might be elsewhere waiting, that's just the most common place they go to for the night.

However, upon arrival, there were two empties sitting here and after my trailer was dropped, 3 full ones.  So, I'm hooking up to one in a few minutes, get it ready to go and get out of here post haste. She has me scheduled for another load going to Oklahoma tomorrow morning at 7:30 am. I can make it if all goes well and I get out of here when I can/should leave.

G'day