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Williams County · Williston, North Dakota

Williams County mineral rights and royalty buyers

Williston is the county seat, the basin takes its name from the town, and Fort Union works the Williston desk. If you own minerals or royalties in Williams County, we would like to read your file.

Williams County at a glance

Williams County sits in the northwest corner of North Dakota, along the Montana line. Williston is the county seat and the largest city in the region, with Tioga to the east and Lake Sakakawea forming the southern edge of the county. The Williston Basin takes its name from the town, and the county has been tied to the oil business for far longer than the shale boom.

North Dakota’s first commercial oil well came in near Tioga in 1951, and that discovery opened the basin. Later generations of drilling moved from vertical wells in conventional zones to horizontal wells in the Bakken and Three Forks. That history matters to a mineral owner, because many Williams County families have held minerals through more than one drilling cycle.

Role in the Bakken and Three Forks

Williams County is part of the core of the North Dakota Bakken. Operators have drilled horizontal wells in the Middle Bakken and the Three Forks here, and the surrounding oilfield service and pipeline infrastructure is deep and mature. For a buyer, that maturity is useful: spacing units are established, operators are known, and the public well files tell a long story about what each unit has done.

Maturity also means no two tracts are alike. One section may carry several producing wells and a clean royalty decimal. The next may be leased but not yet drilled, or may sit inside a unit with locations still to come. We price each tract from the file, not from a county average.

What Williams County sellers should know

Start with the paperwork you already hold: a mineral or royalty deed, a lease, a division order, or a royalty check stub. Those documents tell us the legal description, the interest type, and the operator. If you hold a non-participating royalty or an overriding royalty, say so, because we read the reservation language before we send a number.

North Dakota’s dormant mineral statute can terminate a mineral interest that has gone unused for twenty years unless a statement of claim is recorded with the county recorder. Leases, production, and certain recorded instruments count as use. If you are unsure whether your interest is current, tell us and we will look at the record.

Inherited minerals are common in Williams County. If the interest passed through probate, or sits in a trust or an LLC, we can work with the personal representative or trustee, so long as there is authority to convey.

How Fort Union buys in Williams County

We buy as principal, with our own capital, and we do not charge a commission. The process has 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 are buying and the assumptions behind the number. Fourth, if you accept, we draft the mineral deed, handle tax pro-ration 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.

Own minerals in Williams County?

Send the legal description to [email protected] or use the offer page. If we cannot buy the tract, we will say so.

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