Oil & Gas Land Administration Services for Operators
A short conversation about your leases, wells, and current land records. Valor typically follows up with a proposal for how the work would flow.
- Certifiedlandmen (CPLs)
- SOC-certifiedcontrols
- Inc. 50002021–2025
- BBB A+rating
What Is Oil and Gas Land Administration?
Land administration is the back-office discipline of keeping an operator’s lease, ownership, and contract records accurate and current. It covers abstracting leases, tracking obligations and expirations, maintaining the division of interest that determines how every owner is paid, and feeding clean acreage and ownership data to accounting, revenue, and regulatory. It is the system of record the rest of the back office depends on: get it right and joint interest billing, revenue, and regulatory filings reconcile; get it wrong and a single bad decimal or missed obligation ripples into lost leases, suspense, and owner disputes.
What Valor Runs for Your Land Records
Depending on scope, Valor’s land administration typically includes:
| Function | What Valor does | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Lease records & obligations | Abstracts every lease and contract, and runs an obligation calendar for delay rentals, shut-in and minimum royalties, options, Pugh and continuous-development provisions, primary-term expirations, and HBP status | Obligations typically flagged before they come due |
| Division of interest & decimals | Calculates working interest, royalty, and overriding royalty decimals from net mineral acres, royalty rates, and unit participation | A division of interest typically kept current with title and accounting |
| Acreage, tracts & units | Maintains net and gross acreage, tract participation factors, spacing and pooled units, and communitization agreements on federal acreage | Tract and unit data for allocating production and costs |
| Contracts | Administers JOAs, surface use agreements, rights-of-way, areas of mutual interest, farmouts, and participation agreements | Elections and deadlines tracked |
| Curative & title | Processes curative and typically updates the chain of ownership as owners pass away, interests sell, and entities reorganize | An up-to-date chain of ownership |
| Owner database | Maintains owner names, capacities, addresses, tax IDs, and W-9 status | One clean source for 1099s and escheatment |
The Lease Obligations Valor Tracks
Exact terms depend on each lease, but these are the obligations that can cost operators acreage when they slip:
| Obligation | What it typically means |
|---|---|
| Delay rental | A payment that keeps a lease alive during the primary term without drilling |
| Shut-in royalty | A payment that keeps a lease in force while a well capable of producing is shut in |
| Minimum royalty | A floor royalty payment owed regardless of how much the lease produces |
| Primary term | The fixed initial period; the lease expires at its end unless production, operations, or a savings clause holds it |
| Held by production (HBP) | A lease kept in force beyond the primary term by production |
| Pugh clause | Releases acreage, and sometimes depths, that is not included in a producing unit or held by production |
| Continuous development | Requires new wells on a schedule to keep holding acreage beyond the primary term |
One System of Record With Accounting, JIB & Revenue
Land data is only valuable when the rest of the back office can trust it. Valor keeps land administration on the same system of record as accounting, JIB and revenue, so the decimals, acreage, and obligations in the land file feed every downstream process instead of being re-keyed between systems. Land data also underpins owner relations and regulatory compliance, and accurate ownership records can cut down the owner inquiries that pull your team off operations.
Lease Management Software vs. an Outsourced Land Department
Lease management software stores the leases and runs the calendar, but someone still has to abstract new leases, calculate decimals, work curative, and act before an obligation lapses. That work is what Valor runs. Valor recommends that operators, especially smaller ones, run on Valor’s licenses of industry-standard oil and gas accounting software; the software is billed through separately from the service fee. If you already license a system your team knows, Valor can work inside it instead.
Why Operators Outsource Land Administration to Valor
Land administration is detail-heavy, deadline-driven, and unforgiving of error — exactly the work that is expensive to staff in-house and costly to get wrong. In Valor’s view, it is one of the highest-leverage parts of the back office to outsource. Valor’s certified landmen administer land across every producing state and on federal acreage, and engagements scale from a single operated well to operators running thousands of wells. You keep your assets and your leases, and you approve disbursements and keep every operational and capital decision; Valor typically keeps the records current and the obligations tracked.
Hand off your land records
Tell us your lease and well count and where your land records live today, and we will talk through how Valor would run them.
Start the conversationGetting Started
Engagements typically start with a scoping call about your leases, wells, contracts, and where your land records live today. Valor then typically sends a proposal for how the work would run once you are a client, and can handle setting up your system, on Valor’s software licenses or yours.
Running a formal selection? Valor can answer your RFP. For a first operated well, see division order setup for operators.
Land Administration FAQ
Valor runs land administration for operators: the back-office discipline of keeping an operator's lease, ownership, and contract records accurate and current. It covers abstracting leases, tracking obligations and expirations, maintaining the division of interest that determines how every owner is paid, and feeding clean data to accounting, revenue, and regulatory.
Valor's land administrators, including certified landmen, abstract leases and contracts, calculate and maintain owner decimals, track rentals, shut-in payments, minimum royalties, options, and lease expirations, process ownership transfers and curative, and keep acreage, tract, and unit data correct.
In Valor's view, land administration is one of the highest-leverage parts of the back office to outsource: it is detail-heavy and deadline-driven, and a single missed obligation or wrong decimal can compound into lost leases, suspense, and JIB and revenue errors. Valor provides certified landmen and a system of record without the headcount, scaling from a single operated well to operators running thousands of wells.
Valor keeps land on the same system of record as accounting, JIB, and revenue, because the division of interest and acreage data land administration maintains drive both joint interest billing and revenue distribution. If the decimals or ownership are wrong, every check and JIB built on them is wrong.
Valor calculates and maintains the division of interest: the schedule of every owner's decimal in a well or unit (working interest, royalty, and overriding royalty), calculated from net mineral acres, royalty rates, and unit participation. It governs how every revenue dollar and every JIB cost is split.
Valor abstracts each lease and contract into a tracked obligation calendar (delay rentals, shut-in and minimum royalties, options, Pugh and continuous-development provisions, primary-term expirations, and HBP status) and typically surfaces what is due before deadlines pass.
Valor tracks Pugh clauses in its obligation calendar. A Pugh clause typically releases the parts of a lease (acreage, and sometimes depths) that are not included in a producing unit or held by production; the exact terms depend on the lease.
Valor can administer land across every producing state and on federal acreage, accounting for the different recording offices, pooling and unitization rules, and obligation conventions in each, on one system of record. Valor never buys minerals.
Valor runs land administration on the same system of record as your accounting, JIB, and revenue, and recommends that operators, especially smaller ones, run on Valor's licenses of industry-standard oil and gas accounting software; the software is billed through separately from the service fee. Valor can also work inside your own licensed system.
Valor prices operator services from a standard price sheet: a baseline tiered by number of wells, plus variable charges for other types of work. For most small and mid-size operators, Valor's operator services can typically run 30–50% less than equivalent in-house staff. Software on Valor's licenses is billed through separately.
Valor can answer an RFP for outsourced land administration, so you can compare providers against the same scope and questions before you commit.
Talk to Valor About Land Administration
Tell us your lease and well count and where your land records live today. A member of Valor's operator services team will follow up to discuss your needs.
Key Takeaways
- Land administration is the system of record: The division of interest, obligations, and acreage the rest of the back office runs on.
- One bad decimal or missed obligation compounds: Into lost leases, suspense, and wrong JIB and revenue.
- Obligations tracked: Delay rentals, shut-in and minimum royalties, options, Pugh and continuous-development provisions, primary-term expirations, and HBP status.
- One system of record: Valor keeps land on the same system of record as accounting, JIB, and revenue, with the work done by certified landmen.
- Coverage: Every producing state and federal acreage, from a single operated well to operators running thousands of wells.
- Get started: Contact Valor to outsource your oil and gas land administration.
Page last reviewed: September 2026. Content is reviewed periodically and updated for accuracy.