We take more calls from Eddy and Lea County than from almost anywhere else in our footprint, and the reason is straightforward. These two counties in southeastern New Mexico sit over the most active oil development in the United States. If you own minerals there, whether you inherited them or have held them for decades, you have almost certainly received mail from someone who wants to buy them.
This is a plain look at what makes those minerals distinctive, what actually determines what they are worth, and what the process looks like if you are considering whether to sell mineral rights in Eddy or Lea County.
The two most active oil counties in the country
Lea County is the largest oil-producing county in the United States. It crossed one million barrels per day in 2023, the first county in the country to reach that mark. Eddy County sits directly behind it as the second largest. Together the two account for roughly 17 percent of all onshore oil produced in the United States.
That production comes from the Delaware sub-basin of the Permian Basin, where several formations are stacked vertically. The Bone Spring sands and the Wolfcamp benches are the primary targets, with the Avalon developed selectively, more often on the Eddy side. Operators drill these layers from shared surface pads, commonly with laterals running two miles.
For a mineral owner, the stacked development is the part that matters most. A single tract can produce from several wells across more than one formation over the life of the play, each with its own decimal interest. That is a very different situation from owning under one older vertical well.
Why so much mail arrives in Eddy and Lea
Because the development is dense and the geology is well understood, mineral interests here trade more often than in most parts of the country. That is why the letters and postcards show up, sometimes several in a month.
Offers vary widely, and they are not all built the same way. Some are based on real well data and a specific view of what an operator is likely to drill. Others are opening numbers sent broadly. The useful first step, before responding to any of them, is simply understanding what you actually own: which sections, how many net mineral acres, whether the interest is leased, and whether it is currently producing.
We would rather you understand what you have than move quickly on anything, including with us.
What actually determines the value
There is no single number that applies across a county this large. What we look at, and what any serious buyer looks at, comes down to a handful of things:
Where the tract sits. Two interests a few miles apart can be genuinely different. Development is not uniform across either county.
Whether it is leased, and on what terms. Lease vintage matters. Older leases and modern leases often carry different royalty rates and different post-production cost language, which affects net income separately from how good the wells are.
Producing or not. A producing interest with an established royalty history is valued differently from acreage that is leased but undrilled, and differently again from an unleased interest.
Your decimal. Net mineral acres, the size of the unit, and your royalty rate combine into the decimal interest that determines your share of production.
What the operator is doing nearby. Permits, recent completions, and remaining locations on the surrounding acreage all shape what future development is likely to look like.
Our article on how mineral rights are valued walks through this in more depth.
The federal and state land question
Southeastern New Mexico has an ownership pattern that surprises people who are used to Texas. A large share of Eddy County is federal land administered by the Bureau of Land Management, and a significant share of Lea County is New Mexico state trust land administered by the State Land Office.
If your interest is a private, fee interest, this still matters. Federal and state acreage is leased and permitted through different processes than private acreage, and that can shape development timing on the units around you. It is also a common source of confusion when someone inherits and cannot tell from the paperwork whether the family owns minerals or something else. Our New Mexico inheritance guide covers the sorting-out process, and the Eddy and Lea county pages go deeper on each.
If you are thinking about selling
Selling is one option among several, and it is not automatically the right one. Owners who hold typically want long-term royalty income and are comfortable with the swings that come with commodity prices. Owners who sell usually want certainty now instead of an uncertain stream later, or want to simplify an estate, or have something else they would rather do with the capital. Neither choice is wrong, and we have talked plenty of people through deciding to keep what they have.
If you do want to explore it, here is how it works with us. You send whatever you have, even if that is only a name and a rough idea of where the minerals are. We pull the well data and the records, work out the decimal, look at what the operators are doing around your tract, and then we get on the phone or trade emails and walk you through what we see and how we arrived at it. If it makes sense to go further, we do that on your timeline. If it does not, you understand your position better than you did before, at no cost.
We are a small, family owned office, and we answer our own phones. If you own minerals in New Mexico and want to talk through what you have, give us a call or send a note and we will take a look.