A long inheritance, finally producing.
West Virginia mineral ownership goes back to the post-Civil War land surveys, when much of the state was carved up into small tracts described in metes and bounds rather than rectangular sections. Many of those tracts had their minerals severed off in the late 1800s and early 1900s for the timber and coal boom, well before anyone thought oil and gas would ever come out of these hills. Five generations later, those severed mineral interests are producing the second-largest gas volumes in the United States.
The most active production today sits in the northern panhandle (Marshall, Wetzel, Ohio counties) and across the central north (Doddridge, Tyler, Ritchie, Harrison). Both areas produce from the Marcellus, with the Utica/Point Pleasant as a deeper secondary target. The wet gas and natural gas liquids window cuts across most of the active counties, which means royalty checks here often include separate volumes for gas, condensate, and NGL components.
West Virginia mineral inheritors often own fractional interests in many small tracts at the same time. It is not unusual for a single inheritor to hold 1/64th of a mineral interest in five or six tracts, each with its own deed history and operator. Building a clear picture of what someone owns sometimes takes a few hours of records work. We are used to it.