Antrim Shale Mineral Rights

The Antrim is a mature play, and we underwrite it that way: long, flat production curves and a paper trail going back to the 1980s tell us more than any forecast could.

Most of what crosses our desk out of the Michigan Basin is Antrim Shale gas, and it behaves differently than the shale plays everyone associates with the last fifteen years. This is biogenic gas, generated by microbial activity rather than thermal maturation, produced from a shallow Devonian shale across a band of counties running through Otsego, Antrim, Montmorency, and Crawford. There is no current horizontal drilling program pushing new wells into these units. What we are buying is a tail interest against wells that were largely drilled between the mid-1980s and the early 2000s.

That changes how we price and how fast we can close. A shallow, dewatered biogenic gas well with twenty-plus years of history gives us a decline curve we can trust without much guesswork, which means less back-and-forth on our end and a faster path from signed division order to wired funds.

How we read an Antrim well

Antrim wells dewater over their first several years, then settle into a long, shallow decline that can run for decades. By the time an interest reaches us, most of these wells are well past the dewatering phase, which means the production curve is close to flat and easier to project forward than a young unconventional well still fighting a steep first-year drop. We pull check stubs or operator statements going back as far as the seller has them, and we weight recent trailing volumes heavily because that is the best signal for what the remaining life of the well looks like.

The tradeoff is upside. There is little chance of a step-change from a new lateral being drilled next door, because operators are not actively developing this formation the way they might in an active basin. We price accordingly: what you see in the trailing checks is close to what the remaining asset is worth, discounted for time and risk, rather than something we are marking up for speculative future drilling.

Ownership patterns we see in Michigan

A large share of Antrim mineral ownership traces back to family farms and timber tracts that were leased during the original 1980s boom, then passed down through one or two generations. It is common for us to see an interest split among four or five heirs, none of whom have talked to each other about the asset in years, each holding a small fractional share that generates a modest quarterly or semi-annual check.

Because Michigan requires probate to clear title before a conveyance, we ask early whether the interest passed through a will, an affidavit of descent, or is still sitting in a deceased owner's name. That single fact often determines whether we can close in a few weeks or need to build in time for a heirship affidavit or a short probate process before we can record a deed.

What makes an Antrim package easy versus hard

The easy files: one operator, a clean division order, a Social Security number or EIN that matches the name on the deed, and at least twelve months of consistent check stubs. We can underwrite those in a day or two once we have the documents.

The hard files: unrecorded prior conveyances, an interest split by a decades-old oil and gas lease that never got assigned properly, or gas purchase contracts that changed hands between two or three midstream companies over the years, each restating the interest slightly differently. None of these are dealbreakers, they just add title work, which we do in-house rather than passing the cost or delay back to you.

Courthouse and clerk realities across the play

Register of Deeds offices in Otsego, Antrim, and the surrounding counties are generally well organized for a rural county, but older Antrim-era instruments were sometimes recorded by hand or with inconsistent legal descriptions that only match the original lease, not later unitization orders from the Michigan Public Service Commission or its successor agency. We run our own title search rather than relying solely on what a seller believes they own, which occasionally turns up a shortfall between claimed and confirmed interest, and we would rather find that before closing than after.