Sell Mineral Rights
in San Juan County,
New Mexico.
San Juan County is a different oil and gas story from the Permian. The San Juan Basin underlies most of the county, with gas production going back to 1921 and a current Mancos Shale revival pushing rig activity to its highest level in a decade. We are happy to help you understand what you have.
A century of production,
a Mancos revival now.
San Juan County sits in the northwest corner of New Mexico, in the Four Corners region where four states meet. The county covers the New Mexico portion of the San Juan Basin, the second largest natural gas basin in the United States. The first commercial gas well in New Mexico was drilled near Aztec in 1921 from Farmington Sandstone at about 1,000 feet, and the basin has been producing continuously for a century since.
The modern story is the Mancos Shale. After years of low gas prices that pushed activity to a basin-wide low, rising gas prices and improved horizontal completion technology have driven San Juan rig activity to its highest level since 2015. Private operators are leading the revival, with the gas-rich northern part of the basin near the Colorado border and the oilier southern portion both seeing meaningful new development.
If you are reading this, you may own a piece of that. Maybe you inherited gas royalties through a family chain that goes back generations. Maybe your minerals fell under one of the BP packages that Hilcorp or Simcoe acquired. Maybe you have allotted minerals on the Navajo Nation. This page walks through the rock, the operators, the geography, valuation, and the regulatory landscape including the substantial role of tribal trust minerals and the BLM Farmington Field Office.
Have minerals in San Juan County? Send us what you have and we will take a look.
Stacked pay through the
Cretaceous column.
San Juan Basin geology is uniquely stacked, with multiple Cretaceous formations producing across different depth ranges. Most of the gas comes from Cretaceous strata including the Fruitland coal, Pictured Cliffs, Lewis, Mesaverde, Mancos, and Dakota intervals. Most of the oil comes from the Mancos, Gallup, and Dakota. Modern horizontal development is concentrated in the Mancos Shale, which is both a source rock and a productive reservoir.
The Mancos Shale is the primary target of the current San Juan Basin revival. It is a thick Late Cretaceous marine shale that serves as both a source rock and a productive reservoir. In the gas-rich northern part of the basin near the New Mexico-Colorado border, Mancos wells from operators like LOGOS, Hilcorp, and Simcoe have produced strong gas IP rates, with some wells reaching IPs above 17 million cubic feet per day. In the southern part of the basin, the Mancos produces oil at meaningful rates from operators including DJR Operating and Enduring Resources.
For mineral owners, the Mancos revival means new wells being drilled into formations that may not have been targeted from your specific spacing unit before. Modern Mancos wells use longer laterals and larger fracs than legacy vertical Cretaceous gas wells, and the production curves differ substantially from vintage San Juan production.
Below the Mancos sits the Dakota Sandstone, a porous and permeable Cretaceous reservoir that has been produced since the early days of the basin. Dakota is a primary historic gas target and continues to produce. Above the Mancos sit the Mesaverde Group sandstones, which include multiple legacy gas-producing intervals. Together the Dakota and Mesaverde represent decades of vertical and horizontal gas production across San Juan County.
For mineral owners, the practical implication is that minerals in San Juan County often have multiple producing intervals contributing to royalty income, sometimes with different operators on different wells in the same area. Older Mesaverde and Dakota wells may produce for many decades at low rates, generating modest but steady royalty income.
The Fruitland coal seams produce coalbed methane (CBM) and have been a meaningful gas-producing horizon in the basin for decades. Most Fruitland production is shallow, from a few hundred to a couple thousand feet, and uses different completion technology than deeper shale or sandstone wells. Above the Fruitland, the Pictured Cliffs sandstone has historically produced shallow gas. Most Fruitland coalbed methane in San Juan County is operated by Hilcorp and Enduring on a basin-wide footprint that reflects long-running production.
The practical implication for mineral owners is that some San Juan minerals have meaningful Fruitland or Pictured Cliffs production tied to legacy CBM development, generating royalty income on a different economic basis than modern Mancos Shale production. CBM royalty calculations can be more sensitive to gas price and post-production costs than other gas types.
Who is drilling on your
San Juan County minerals.
The San Juan Basin operator landscape is unusually private and unusually concentrated. Many of the largest historic operators (BP, El Paso, Burlington Resources) sold or merged out of the basin in the 2010s. The current operators include some of the largest private oil and gas companies in the country, plus a handful of focused public operators. The five operators below are leaders in current San Juan County activity.
We know how these operators develop in San Juan County. Happy to give you context on yours.
Not all San Juan County
minerals are built the same.
San Juan County covers about 5,538 square miles across the northwestern corner of New Mexico. About 63 percent of the county is reservation or trust land, with the Navajo Nation occupying roughly 60 percent and the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe Reservation occupying about 3 percent. The remainder is a mix of private fee minerals concentrated around the river valleys and federal minerals administered by the BLM Farmington Field Office. Where in the county your minerals sit shapes everything from operator activity to mineral title structure.
What your San Juan County
mineral rights are worth.
Valuation in San Juan County is more nuanced than in pure-oil counties. The basin produces a mix of gas, oil, and coalbed methane, with significant variation by area, formation, and operator. The four scenarios below cover what we see most often.
We would rather look at real facts than speak in generalities. Send us what you have.
New Mexico rules,
San Juan realities.
San Juan County operates under the New Mexico oil and gas regime for state and private minerals, but the practical regulatory landscape is shaped substantially by federal mineral administration through the BLM Farmington Field Office and by tribal mineral administration through the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The rules and processes differ meaningfully from the New Mexico Permian.
The NMOCD and San Juan spacing
The New Mexico Oil Conservation Division (NMOCD) regulates oil and gas activity on state and private minerals in San Juan County. NMOCD permits wells, conducts hearings on spacing and unitization applications, and maintains the public well database. San Juan Basin spacing has historically used a complex mix of patterns reflecting decades of accumulated regulatory orders, with modern Mancos horizontal development typically using larger units to match longer laterals.
BLM Farmington and federal minerals
The BLM Farmington Field Office administers federal minerals across San Juan County, which represent a substantial share of the non-tribal acreage in the basin. Federal lease sales are conducted quarterly. Standard federal lease royalty rates are 12.5 percent for older leases and 16.67 percent for newer leases under the Inflation Reduction Act. The Farmington Field Office has historically had significant San Juan permit activity, though pace has varied with commodity prices.
Navajo Nation trust and allotted minerals
About 60 percent of San Juan County is Navajo Nation reservation or trust land. Mineral interests within the Navajo Nation are either tribal trust minerals (held in trust for the Tribe collectively) or allotted minerals (held in trust for individual tribal members or their heirs). Both are administered through the Bureau of Indian Affairs, not through the NMOCD or BLM. Leasing, royalty payments, and any sale or transfer of allotted interests are subject to BIA approval processes that differ substantially from fee or federal minerals.
Operator changes and suspended royalties
San Juan County has had some of the most extensive operator turnover of any major US basin, particularly through the BP, El Paso, and Burlington Resources divestitures of the 2010s. Each operator change requires a new division order. Mineral owners who moved or whose contact information changed may have division orders that did not reach them, leading to royalty income held in suspense, sometimes for years. Tracking down current operator contacts and any suspended income is a frequent first step for San Juan mineral owners.
The real questions
mineral owners ask.
We have been through these conversations hundreds of times. Below are honest answers to the things people actually want to know.
Find out what your
San Juan County minerals
are actually worth.
Send us what you have, or what you think you have. We will pull NMOCD and BLM records, check operator activity in your section, look for suspended income if relevant, and put together a plain-English summary with our reasoning laid out. If it makes sense to go further, we move on your timeline. If not, you have a free breakdown you can take anywhere.
More for San Juan County
mineral owners.
San Juan status, April 2026
The San Juan Basin in northwestern New Mexico is primarily a natural gas basin and remains the second-largest gas-producing basin in the United States. Oil production from the New Mexico portion has been growing modestly through the Mancos Shale revival in the southern part of the basin, where DJR Operating and Enduring Resources have been actively drilling. For San Juan County mineral owners, the practical takeaway is that the basin is seeing its highest rig activity since 2015, with both gas-focused operators and Mancos oil operators contributing to the resurgence.