Ownership and acreage
- Mineral interest
- Ownership of oil, gas and other minerals beneath a tract, subject to prior conveyances and reservations.
- Royalty interest
- A right to receive a share of production or revenue, generally without paying drilling and operating costs.
- NMA
- Net mineral acres: the owner’s fractional mineral ownership multiplied by the gross tract acreage.
- NRA
- Net royalty acres: a method of normalizing royalty ownership using a stated royalty basis.
- NRI
- Net revenue interest: the decimal share of production revenue credited to an owner.
- ORRI
- Overriding royalty interest: a royalty carved from the lessee’s working interest and generally limited to the lease term.
Leasing and development
- Bonus
- Consideration paid for signing an oil and gas lease, often quoted per net mineral acre.
- Primary term
- The initial lease period during which the lessee generally must establish production or satisfy another lease-maintenance provision.
- Held by production
- A lease that remains effective after its primary term because qualifying production or operations continue.
- Pooling
- Combining acreage or interests to form a unit for drilling and production.
- Division order
- An operator document stating the decimal interest used to distribute production revenue.
- Shut-in royalty
- A payment that may maintain a lease when a capable well is not producing, subject to the lease terms.
Title and transactions
- Title curative
- Documentation used to resolve an ownership gap, ambiguity or recording issue.
- Reservation
- Language by which a grantor retains a stated interest when conveying property.
- Exception
- Language excluding a previously created interest or property from a conveyance.
- Effective date
- The date from which the rights and obligations of an agreement are measured.
- Diligence period
- The time allowed to evaluate title, ownership, production and other transaction requirements.
- Closing
- The point at which required documents and consideration are delivered under the agreement.
The same term can have a more specific meaning in a particular document. Read definitions together with the granting, reservation and property-description language.