First off, I would like to thank everybody who has commented so far. It is gratifying to see that the site is being put to good use. Every comment is useful or thought-provoking in some way. For example, now I am considering offering “lifetime memberships” or something like that that would be a one-time cost as if you had bought a piece of software. As for making something available for download, I have considered that, but it would be beyond my technical capabilities, at least at this point. Just a note, my main reason for starting this site in the first place was that I wanted to move entirely to the Macintosh platform instead of Windows, and deed plotting software was one place where I couldn’t see any alternatives on the Mac. I had experience with PHP web programming before, so it was a natural step for me to put it on the Web. Of course it has some limitations, but with things like the iPhone becoming more common, there are now more and more places where Tractplotter.com is usable. Even if you’re standing in a courthouse in the middle of nowhere, chances are you will have cell phone reception and will thus be able to use your iPhone or other Web-enabled smartphone.
As for progress on the site: I am sad to say that there has not been much progress since the last blog entry. My job, some out-of-town trips, and a family member in the hospital have kept me away from working on the site as much as I would have liked. I am now setting an end-of-August target date for moving everything to the new server facility, and the rewrite for end-of-September. Full “pay site” functionality will probably not happen before the end of the year.
Moving on to other topics…. Marty asked in comments for my insights on mineral acres. Well, there really isn’t too much to say about mineral acres. Usually you talk about mineral acres as being distinct from the actual acreage of a tract; i.e., we are talking about a partial mineral interest. For example, maybe somebody owns a 50% mineral interest in a 10-acre tract. This means that they have 5 net mineral acres, but the important thing is that those 5 net mineral acres are inseparable from the entire 10-acre tract. It is like owning a half interest in a company; you can’t say that the inventory is yours and the physical plant and intellectual property is the other owner’s; you both own a 50% interest in the entire thing. Or if you are a 20% partner in ownership of a racehorse, you cannot say that you own the head while the other partners own the rest of the body; you each have a 20% interest in the entire horse.
This is why we often see mineral interests referred to as “undivided” mineral interests. To beat a dead horse, no pun intended, if you own the aforementioned 5 net mineral acres, you cannot point to any particular 5 acres of the 10-acre tract and say that you own those 5 mineral acres while somebody else owns the other 5. If you wanted to, you could approach the other mineral owner(s) and negotiate to convey your 50% to them on 5 of the acres, and they would convey to you their 50% on the other 5 acres, and then you would have a 100% mineral interest in 5 acres and so would they (instead of each owning 50% of 10 acres). Either way, it’s the same net mineral acreage, and this is probably not a terribly practical scenario for most people. But, it could be done. I’m only using it here to illustrate the concept of partial mineral ownership and how mineral acres are derived from the total acreage of the property.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, and nothing that I write here or elsewhere should be construed as constituting legal, financial, or any other kind of advice. My knowledge is limited to Texas, which takes a “bundle of rights” view of mineral ownership, and I know that all of the different states have their own take on mineral ownership. Texas’ body of oil and gas law is generally acknowledged to be the most established and complicated out of all the states’, as Texas was where the oil boom originally occurred, and oil and gas concerns have continued pretty consistently to the present day.
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