Richland County mineral rights
Sidney, Montana. See how we buy minerals and royalties in Richland County.
Roosevelt County · Wolf Point, Montana
Roosevelt County mineral rights and royalty buyers
Wolf Point is the county seat. Part of Roosevelt County is Fort Peck Reservation, so the first question is whether your minerals are fee or held in trust.
Roosevelt County at a glance
Roosevelt County is in northeast Montana, along the Missouri River and the North Dakota line. Wolf Point is the county seat. Poplar, which is the headquarters of the Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes of the Fort Peck Reservation, is in the county too. The Census Bureau counted 10,794 people in 2020 and estimates 10,242 for 2025, across about 2,355 square miles, and reports that 58.8 percent of residents are American Indian or Alaska Native alone (Census QuickFacts).
Most of the county's story comes down to the reservation boundary. Inside it, minerals can be fee, tribal trust, or allotted trust, and each kind is handled differently. Outside it, Roosevelt County is ordinary Montana fee minerals, with wells that range from old conventional fields to newer horizontal Bakken wells near the North Dakota line.
Fort Peck Reservation and trust minerals
The Fort Peck Reservation covers parts of four counties: Valley, Roosevelt, Daniels, and Sheridan, according to the Bureau of Indian Affairs' oil and gas guide for Fort Peck. The BIA's Fort Peck Agency says the reservation has about 2,094,000 acres inside its exterior boundary and that the Agency looks after more than 1.49 million surface acres held in trust (BIA Fort Peck Agency). Not every acre inside the boundary is trust land, and not every mineral interest follows the surface, so ownership has to be checked tract by tract.
That guide says the BIA handles leasing of tribal and allotted land and that BLM supervises drilling and production on it. For those minerals the federal side, not the Montana board, is who you deal with. It also means the state's tax treatment is different: the Montana Department of Revenue says tribal royalties from on-reservation oil production leased under the Indian Mineral Leasing Act of 1938 are exempt from the state production tax (revenue.mt.gov).
Interests held in trust are not bought and sold like fee minerals, and we don't expect to be able to make an offer on one. If yours is allotted or tribal trust land, the BIA Fort Peck Agency is the place to start. If you aren't sure which kind you have, send the legal description and we'll tell you what the recorded title shows.
Role in the Bakken and Three Forks
Roosevelt County is on the western flank of the Williston Basin. Its older production is conventional. The BIA's guide places the East Poplar, Tule Creek, and Volt fields in Roosevelt County, and the Montana 2024 annual review still lists producing fields named for Poplar.
The newer story is horizontal Bakken wells. The same annual reviews show county oil rising from 2,016,284 barrels in 2021 to 2,400,389 in 2022, 2,626,421 in 2023, and 4,299,758 in 2024, which is about 16 percent of the state's oil. Oil well completions went from 1 in 2021 to 4, then 10, then 12 in 2024. The 2024 completions were in townships 27 to 30 North, ranges 57 to 59 East. We left out 2025 because we couldn't find a county figure we could check.
The Board's hearing notice for its October 15, 2026 hearing has 13 Roosevelt County dockets among the 99 county dockets we counted. Several ask to extend the deadline for starting a well in an existing temporary spacing unit, and others create new overlapping units or ask to drill more wells.
What Roosevelt County sellers should know
For fee minerals, the Montana rules apply. The Board's page for mineral and surface owners at dnrc.mt.gov covers notice to surface owners and occupied-structure owners, damage compensation, and the royalty payment rules, including interest on late payments. The Montana State University Extension guide to owning and leasing oil and gas minerals is a plain-language read on what a lease does and doesn't give away.
Production tax on non-working interests such as royalty is 15.10 percent as of January 1, 2024, according to the Montana Department of Revenue. Our oil and gas tax page compares that with North Dakota.
BLM's October 27, 2026 Montana-Dakotas sale offered one Montana parcel, in Musselshell County, so nothing in Roosevelt County. Leasing on trust land goes through the BIA, not BLM's competitive sales. Federal sale notices are on BLM's Montana-Dakotas page.
How Fort Union buys in Roosevelt County
We buy as principal, with our own capital, and we don't charge a commission. There are four steps. First, you send the county and legal description, plus anything else you have, such as net acres, a decimal, or a royalty stub. Second, we build the runsheet and map the tract into current spacing. Third, you receive a written cash offer that states the interest we think we're buying and the assumptions behind the number. Fourth, if you accept, we draft the mineral deed, handle tax proration and recording, and wire the funds at closing. Typical close is 21 to 45 days, and we pay standard closing costs on deals we complete. You can read the full steps on the process page. On a Roosevelt County tract we also check early whether the land is fee or trust, because that decides whether we can help at all.
Own minerals in Roosevelt County?
Send the legal description to offers@fortunionminerals.com or use the offer page. If we can't buy the tract, we'll say so.
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