Land Title Operations, AI Integration, and Lease Administration Workflows

Organizational and Personnel Updates

  • Senior Title Landman Promotion:

    • Kyle has been promoted to Senior Title Landman.

    • The promotion was previously communicated only to Kyle and Brad prior to group notification.

    • An official company-wide announcement email is scheduled for distribution.

  • New Title Management Hire:

    • Belinda Nelson (referred to as Mindy with an "e") has been hired as the incoming Title Manager, with an effective start date of October 19.

    • Belinda Nelson is an attorney with specialized Ohio title background.

    • Professional history includes legal group experience at Chesapeake Energy focused on curing title requirements, reviewing title opinions, and drafting curative requirements.

    • Most recently employed as a Division Order (DO) Analyst at Diamondback Energy.

Title Opinion and Lease Administration Process Improvements

  • Process Bottlenecks Between Lease Administration and Title:

    • Workload constraints stem from an "avalanche of information" when managing Division of Interest (DOI) files, title opinions, and system comparisons.

    • Initial review comparisons between Ridgecoat DOIs, Quorum (QLS), and title opinions identify repeated administrative defects, including:

      • Missing lease numbers.

      • Incorrect royalty rates recorded against tracts.

      • Leases mapped to incorrect systems or incorrect landman solar system tags.

      • Unrecorded or absent leases in LM 10.

      • Discrepancies in ownership breakdowns (e.g., heirship broken out in the DOI while the Ria rollup has not taken place).

  • Upstream Workflow Restructuring for Lease Admin:

    • Current procedural sequence involves Lease Admin submitting DOIs before title review, forcing Title Landmen to repeatedly request corrections or revise completeness sheets in OneNote.

    • Proposed revised operational protocol:

      1. DOI generated and delivered to Lease Admin (managed by Amber).

      2. Lease Admin performs full unit workups upfront: cleans all lease records, updates QLS, and resolves discrepancies in LM 10.

      3. Lease Admin hands off fully vetted, lease-cleansed packages to Title Landmen.

    • Eliminates repetitive communications regarding mismatched tracts, wrong royalty rates, and unlinked parcels.

    • Eliminates the Lease Admin section of OneNote and prevents redundant rework by title analysts.

  • Prep Note Prioritization:

    • Reviewers should avoid spending time tracking non-critical notes (such as missing addresses, Non-Participating Royalty Interests [NPRI], or general money notices).

    • Focus remains strictly on high-priority "red" alerts, such as debt clause problems, while using other prep notes strictly as reference backup.

  • Broker DOI Normalization:

    • Field brokerage DOIs frequently add non-owning spouses into the ownership schedule because husband and wife signed the oil and gas lease together.

    • This practice clutters unit records across the McKeegan units.

    • Protocol initiative with Robert: Compare the DOI against title opinions and abstracts to eliminate non-title spouses from ownership decks prior to title review, ensuring unitization criteria are met without manual removal by title examiners.

Claude AI Integration and Workflow Automation

  • Title Opinion and Abstract Review Model:

    • Claude is being utilized to read Drilling Title Opinions (DTOs), title opinions, abstracts, and curative requirements.

    • Output includes a standardized "confidence" rating reflecting Claude's analytical certainty regarding its interpretation of title requirements and abstracts.

    • Operational reliance strategy:

      • "High Confidence" Classifications: Cases where the title opinion ownership perfectly matches the DOI, DTO, and abstract with zero ownership shifts or detrimental requirements can be marked green and cleared without redundant full-length manual rereading.

      • Verification Baseline: Comparative testing by Karen shows Claude is approximately 90%90\% accurate in matching human examiner outputs, capturing necessary document reference metadata, and verifying that parcel fractions sum to 11.

      • Feedback Protocol: Analysts record adjustments and feed specific corrections back to Claude to refine prompt accuracy for subsequent runs.

  • Unit Timelines and Project Deliverables:

    • Current units under Claude-assisted title review: McKeegan South and McKeegan North Rios.

    • McKeegan South includes two major tracts already processed from title memoranda.

    • Target milestone: Complete McKeegan units in October to clear capacity for commencing the Sloan units on November 1.

  • Cross-Functional Claude Adoption:

    • Designated users equipped with Claude licenses in Land include: Jake, Amber, Amanda Lynch, Tamara, Stuart, Robert, and Kyle.

    • Amanda Lynch utilizes Claude for review of high-dollar ownership transfers.

    • Jake is organizing a Land team chat and roundtable to share prompt libraries, tutorials, and practical problem-solving applications.

  • Data Integration Limitations:

    • Claude lacks direct API access to Quorum.

    • Quorum rolls up owner interests across multiple parcels into single gross sums rather than parcel-level breakdowns.

    • Workflow requirement: Landmen must continue manual exports of spreadsheets or DOIs into Claude when transferring interests across individual parcels until the implementation of a parcel-based database.

Well Unit Monitoring and Shut-in Reporting Automation

  • Single Well Unit (SWU) Workflow:

    • Shut-in payment compliance requires identifying whether a shut-in or downed well is the sole producing well holding a unit.

    • Manual review protocol formerly utilized: Analysts manually cross-referenced GAV, pulled API numbers from Well Master, and verified whether units contained single or multiple wells.

  • Production Monitoring Sheet Automation:

    • Production monitoring sheets currently require manual entry of unit numbers and secondary well names, pulling historical data week-over-week.

    • Target operational state: Implement an automated report from GIS/IT cross-referencing all wells within specified units using XLOOKUP.

    • If a downed well (e.g., Brothers well) is associated with an active unit containing two other producing wells, the lease remains held by production, removing the requirement to generate a shut-in report.

    • Transitioning this task from manual data entry frees analyst hours for active title curative cases.

Case Management and Title Curative Matters: Michelle Busick Estate

  • Case Specifics and Royalty Discrepancy:

    • Involves the estate of Michelle Busick concerning an uncashed bonus payment check for $100,000\$100,000 across large, undrilled units.

    • Cousins of the decedent contacted the company alleging incorrect payment amounts.

    • The payment amounts differed due to distinct negotiated lease terms: Michelle Busick was leased at $4,500 per acre\$4,500\text{ per acre}, whereas the cousins negotiated $6,500 per acre\$6,500\text{ per acre}.

    • Lease terms and per-acre financial details represent confidential business information and are not disclosable to third-party family members.

  • Heirship and Title Requirements:

    • Decedent's brothers requested the bonus payment be reissued to the heirs based on an unrecorded Affidavit of Death and Heirship (AOH).

    • Legal standard applied: The company will not reissue payments to cousins or collateral relatives without properly recorded estate and probate documents, as cousins do not qualify as immediate next-of-kin absent formal testamentary or intestate proceedings.

  • Departmental Role Segregation:

    • Tracking whether an issued accounting check remains outstanding in the banking system is an accounting / Land Information Systems (LIS) function, not a Title Landman responsibility.

    • Analyst coordination occurred with Brandy via Teams to confirm check status.

    • Directive: Title Landmen must not dedicate operational hours to tracking uncashed checks. Once curative documentation is reviewed (or determined inadequate), the issue must be formally routed or assigned back to LIS/Accounting.

  • Landowner Relations Incidents:

    • Walk-in disruptions occurred involving external parties demanding accelerated case reviews outside the standard 6060 to 9090-day curative timeline.

Team Inquiries, Education, and Miscellaneous Operations

  • Lindsey's Curative Forms and Questionnaire Initiative:

    • Inquiry received from Lindsey regarding establishing standardized intake forms, combining questionnaires and affidavit generation.

    • Directive: Deprioritize this project for the Land Title group. Title Landmen do not distribute questionnaires directly to owners.

    • Immediate resolution: Transmit existing questionnaire fields to Lindsey for self-service implementation; review full system intake once digital PDF conversion workflows are established.

  • Academic and Educational Milestones:

    • Olivia completed a Real Property Law examination, scoring 8585, representing one of the highest grades under a notoriously rigorous Hark professor.

    • Ongoing coursework includes a class in Negotiations requiring structured peer-to-peer negotiations each class session alongside an upcoming presentation.

  • Operational Schedules and Company Events:

    • Work schedules are affected by regional Fall breaks and Thanksgiving schedules.

    • Gulfport Annual Christmas Party is scheduled for the first Saturday in December.

    • Annual company Halloween costume contest is set for a Wednesday.

    • Historical reference: Professional court appearances include emergency Oklahoma Corporation Commission en banc appeal hearings held in Tulsa, requiring proper business attire.

Questions, Dialogue, and Strategy Discussions

  • Discussion on Claude Title Review Reliance:

    • Question: How much reliance should analysts place on Claude's title opinion and abstract reviews when the confidence level is marked as "High"?

    • Response: If Claude indicates high confidence, the ownership in the title opinion matches the DOI, and the abstract shows no title changes or adverse requirements, analysts can mark the item green without conducting a full duplicative reading of the attorney opinion.

    • Follow-up Strategy: For current initial stages, analysts (such as Karen) read the opinion and compare results to Claude's output to verify accuracy. Analysts can write desired curative language, input it into Claude, and train the model to mimic internal team styles for future runs.

  • Discussion on McKeegan Unit Timelines and Capacity:

    • Prompt: Can the title group complete both McKeegan North and McKeegan South units within the current month to allow the Sloan units to begin by November 1?

    • Response: Current analyst workloads include individual allocations of 2828 active cases, numerous case assignments held by Kyle, and ongoing work completing Harvey 401 notes. Full-time progression is required to hit the November 1 target.

  • Discussion on Quorum Interest Access via AI:

    • Prompt: How can analysts feed parcel ownership numbers and interest amounts to Claude if Claude cannot interface directly with Quorum?

    • Response: Analysts must export existing DOIs or Quorum reports into spreadsheets and feed them into the model builder. Because Quorum rolls multi-parcel ownership into single aggregate sums per owner, manual isolation of parcel-level interests remains necessary until a parcel-centric database is implemented.

  • Discussion on Single Well Unit Manual Workflows:

    • Prompt: What specific data is required to eliminate manual tracking of single wells on units for shut-in reports?

    • Response: The spreadsheet requires unit numbers and associated well names using XLOOKUP. Analysts should request an automated GIS/IT report linking all wells within a unit. If a unit contains multiple active wells, down wells do not risk lease expiration, removing the need for manual shut-in reporting.

  • Dialogue Concerning the Michelle Busick Matter:

    • Prompt: What action should an analyst take when cousins request reissuance of an outstanding $100,000\$100,000 bonus payment on behalf of a deceased relative?

    • Response: Advise the parties that the lease bonus amount ($4,500 per acre\$4,500\text{ per acre} versus $6,500 per acre\$6,500\text{ per acre}) is confidential. Refuse payment reissuance based on an unrecorded Affidavit of Heirship alone until formal probate/estate documents are filed. Reassign check tracking questions directly to Brandy/LIS/Accounting and close the Landman inquiry ticket.