Most people who ask this question have one of three things in hand: an old deed from a parent or grandparent, a letter from a landman or a mineral buyer, or a royalty check that arrived out of nowhere. Whichever it is, the path in North Dakota is the same four steps.
Every North Dakota tract is described from the Fifth Principal Meridian: section, township north, range west. The description is on the deed, on any division order you signed, and usually printed in the property column of a check stub. Write down every tract, including any government lots (irregular parcels along rivers and section edges, described as "Lot 3" rather than a quarter-quarter).
Mineral deeds, reservations and leases are recorded with the County Recorder of the county the land sits in — not with the state. North Dakota's 53 county recorders each keep their own grantor/grantee index; most of the oil counties (McKenzie, Williams, Mountrail, Dunn) publish it online. You are looking for the instrument that gave your family the minerals (a mineral deed, or a warranty deed that reserved the minerals when the surface was sold) and for anything that later conveyed them away. If the trail runs through a death, look for a probate, a decree of distribution or an affidavit of heirship in the same index; minerals that were never formally passed on are the most common reason a check stops or never starts.
North Dakota is a fee-mineral state at heart: most minerals under private surface are private. The exceptions matter — federal minerals along the Missouri River and in the Badlands (BLM North Dakota, Dickinson), the Fort Berthold Reservation where allotted and tribal minerals are administered by the BIA, and state trust minerals managed by the Department of Trust Lands. Check which one you are dealing with before you assume a surface deed carried the minerals. The map shades federal minerals so you can see at a glance whether the section you own surface on has private minerals at all.
Once you have a tract, look at it. North Dakota Industrial Commission, Oil and Gas Division records will tell you which wells have been permitted, drilled and produced on that section and, through spacing orders, which horizontal wells a mile away are draining it. If there is production and you are not being paid, the operator's division-order department is the next call; if there is a rig on the way, a landman will find you before long. North Dakota's activity is concentrated in the Williston Basin — Bakken and Three Forks in McKenzie, Williams, Mountrail and Dunn counties, with Madison and Red River production across the older fields; if your tract is there, assume someone else already knows about it.
Put the tracts, the recorded instruments and the fractions in one place. Owners who can answer "what do I own and where" in one sentence get paid faster, negotiate better leases and hand their heirs something other than a shoebox. If you own in more than one state — common for families who homesteaded across the Rockies — keep one set of books per person or trust and tag each tract with its state.
No. Ownership is proven by documents recorded with each county recorder. NDIC records show wells and production, not who owns the minerals under them. Federal mineral ownership is a BLM record; tribal minerals are a BIA record.
Probably. Operators pay the owner of record, often found through a title search after a well is drilled. Ask the payor for the division order and the legal description it is based on, then confirm the chain of title at the county.
It depends on whether they are producing, what the wells are making, how much undrilled acreage sits inside an active spacing unit, and current prices. Look at the section's production history and nearby spuds before you answer a buyer's letter.