Nineteen eighty-one. That is the year stamped on an oil and gas lease sitting on page three of our title commitment, Schedule B-II, exception three, and I found it at 10:40 on a Tuesday night with reading glasses pushed up into my hair and a closing scheduled for the following Friday. Page three. Exception three. Recorded 1981. The words "mineral rights reserved" sat in the middle of the paragraph, and I read the sentence four times.
The house was $296,000 on 0.4 acres outside Butler, our down payment was $59,200 pulled from a decade of two incomes and no vacations, and by 10:41 p.m. I was fully prepared to believe someone could drill a derrick behind my tomato plants. My husband told me to sleep. I opened four browser tabs instead, one of 'em a forum thread from 2019 with 71 replies, and by midnight I had scared myself thoroughly about a house we had not bought yet.
The exception means less and more than it looks like. Both at once. Less, cuz nobody has produced gas on our street since the Reagan administration and the company named on the lease dissolved sometime in the nineties. More, cuz a dormant lease can wake up if anyone ever finds gas under our road and buys the rights, and the real question was never is this scary but who pays if it wakes up, which is what a $2,500 seller credit, a $180 endorsement, and a title officer named Ruth with 31 years of patience actually settled.
the commitment arrives, 47 pages
A title commitment, for the uninitiated, is a 47-page PDF the title company sends about nine days before closing, and it comes in three schedules: Schedule A says who owns what, Schedule B-I lists requirements, and Schedule B-II lists exceptions, the things the title insurance will not promise you are problem-free. I asked our agent whether we should read B-II together and she said, and I quote, honestly, nobody reads it. I read it. I have made it my whole personality since. Exception three sat on the third page of B-II with a book and page number attached.
exception three, recorded 1981
What the exception actually says: an oil and gas lease recorded in 1981 between the family that farmed these 84 acres and a company called Keystone Natural Gas, primary term 20 years, continuing so long thereafter as oil or gas is produced, with the mineral estate reserved from every deed that came after. The company's charter was dissolved by the state in 1996. The state geological survey map, which I searched at 11:15 p.m. with escalating intensity, shows zero wells on our parcel and zero on the two adjacent ones. No wells. Not one.
the 11 p.m. spiral
The spiral deserves its own paragraph cuz other buyers will recognize it: forced pooling articles, fractional mineral forum posts, a video about a family in another state whose backyard became a well pad, and a 2 a.m. question to my husband, what if they frack the tomatoes. What calmed me down was not reassurance but documents, the dissolved charter printout, the survey map with no wells, and a state extension office fact sheet on dormant mineral interests that detailed, in twelve paragraphs, how rarely these leases wake up and what it costs when they do. I poked at all of it until the fear ran out of sources. Then I slept.
Ruth at the title company
Ruth has worked at Hollis Title for 31 years and detailed three things to me in eleven minutes. The exception means the title policy will not warrant the minerals as clean, which is disclosure, not doom. Dormant means no current production, and no production means no current surface-access rights, the part I actually feared. And our options were accept it, negotiate a credit, or buy a mineral rights endorsement where available, about $180, which pays for certain surface damages if extraction ever happens. She also said, you would be surprised how many leases from the 70s and 80s are sleeping in these files, which was somehow the most comforting sentence of the entire month.
the $2,500 credit, the $180 endorsement
The seller's first answer thru the agents was that everyone has that exception and it means nothin', which is both approximately true and a terrible way to keep a buyer calm. Our addendum asked for a $4,000 credit plus the endorsement. We settled at $2,500 plus the endorsement, signed by the seller inside 24 hours, and the endorsement itself cost $180 at closing. To be clear about what it does: it does not stop anyone from ever drilling, nothin' in a title document stops a lawful mineral owner, but it pays for certain surface damages and loss of use if extraction ever occurs. It is a narrow thing. We bought it anyways, and I have read its exclusions three times.
what the county clerk basement smells like
We drove to the county records office on a Saturday, because I needed to see the thing with my own eyes, and the basement smells like warm paper and dust and has microfilm machines older than the lease itself. Deed book 902, canvas binding, our lease in typed ink: Elmer and Rosa H., the farm family, leasing to Keystone Natural Gas for a consideration of $1.00 and other good and valuable consideration, Rosa's signature carrying a flourish that suggests she enjoyed signing things. The clerk, who has watched people do exactly this before, printed our copies at ten cents a page and said, at least you came in, most folks just argue with Zillow.
closing friday, page three annotated
We closed on a Friday in May, and our copy of the commitment now has Ruth's pen marks in the margin of page three, with the endorsement stapled behind the exception like a receipt for a specific, limited peace of mind. The mineral rights under the tomato plants are still not ours, and as far as the records show, never were, and the $59,200 down payment is still gone in the good way it is sposed to be gone. If some successor to Keystone ever shows up with a map and a rig, we know exactly which page to open, and what we are owed. Nineteen eighty-one. Page three. Exception three. That is it. That is the whole title.
