Sell Mineral Rights in New Mexico

Two counties in New Mexico can mean two entirely different value conversations, and this calculator asks which one you're having before it gives you a number.

Lea and Eddy counties sit inside the Delaware Basin, the deepest and among the most actively drilled sub-basins of the Permian, and mineral acreage here has been some of the strongest-priced in the country for the better part of a decade. Lovington and Carlsbad have seen operators stack multiple horizontal benches under a single section - Wolfcamp, Bone Spring, sometimes both - which is part of why per-acre pricing in this corner of the state can run well above what most other plays command.

Drive northwest into San Juan County and you're in an entirely different basin with an entirely different story: mature, largely vertical gas and coalbed methane production, much of it decades old, with far less new drilling. Both are New Mexico. Neither prices the same, and our calculator keeps them separated so you're not comparing a Delaware Basin decimal to a San Juan one.

Why Delaware Basin comps carry more weight

Because Lea and Eddy counties see a genuinely high volume of leasing, drilling, and mineral sales activity, the calculator can lean on a richer set of recent comparables here than almost anywhere else in our coverage area. That richer data doesn't guarantee a higher number for your specific tract, but it does mean the range we return is tighter and more defensible than the wide-open estimate you'd get in a thin-data state, simply because there's more real transaction history to check it against.

Multi-bench development also changes the math on royalty income: if your minerals sit under a section with more than one producing zone, your net monthly check can come from multiple wellbores stacked at different depths, and the calculator wants each producing well's decimal interest entered separately rather than lumped into one guess.

San Juan Basin is a different calculation entirely

San Juan Basin production is mostly natural gas from wells that, in many cases, have been online since the 1990s or earlier, with coalbed methane layered in as its own producing zone. Decline has largely already happened - these are flatter, longer-tail streams rather than young horizontal wells still working down a steep early curve, so the multiple applied looks more like a mature-asset multiple than a Permian growth multiple.

Farmington-area minerals also carry more federal and tribal-adjacent land patterns than the southeastern part of the state, so double-check your division order for any complicating interests - unitization here can be older and messier than a modern Delaware Basin division order.

What to enter for the most accurate estimate

For Delaware Basin acreage, your county, net mineral acres, decimal interest per well, and trailing royalty checks are the highest-value inputs - the calculator will also ask whether your minerals are held by production or still open, since unleased acreage in that basin right now can command real lease bonus money on its own. For San Juan acreage, production history and current well status (still producing vs. plugged) matter more than lease terms, since new leasing activity there is comparatively rare.

Whatever county you're in, remember this is a starting estimate built from public and market comps, not an appraisal - New Mexico's split-estate history, especially around old federal and state trust land, means your actual net interest can differ from what a quick deed search suggests.

It also pays to check whether your acreage sits inside a state trust or checkerboarded federal section, common across parts of southeastern New Mexico, since those boundaries can complicate exactly which spacing unit your minerals actually fall inside and change your effective decimal interest more than owners expect.