If a horizontal well two sections away has started paying you, or a landman has told you your minerals are "in a unit," a spacing order is the reason. It is the single document that decides which tracts share a well's production and in what proportion, and it is public.
The North Dakota Industrial Commission, Oil and Gas Division, on an operator's application, establishes a spacing unit: a defined area that one well or a set of wells is allowed to drain. Everyone who owns minerals inside the unit shares in every well drilled in it, in proportion to their acreage, whether the wellbore crosses their tract or not.
North Dakota spacing units are large: 1,280-acre two-section units are standard in the Bakken and 2,560-acre units are common for three-mile laterals, so a 40-acre tract carries a small decimal but shares in a lot of wells. Overlapping spacing units for different formations are normal in McKenzie and Williams counties.
Your royalty decimal on a unit well is your net mineral acres in the unit ÷ total unit acres × your royalty rate. A 40-acre tract in a 1,280-acre unit at a 3/16 royalty is 40 ÷ 1,280 × 0.1875 = 0.005859. When operators enlarge a unit for longer laterals, the denominator grows and each owner's decimal shrinks — while the number of wells that pay you usually grows too.
Inside a unit, owners who have not leased can be pooled by order under N.D.C.C. § 38-08-08: the Commission pools all interests in a spacing unit on an operator's application; an unleased owner who does not participate is carried and pays a risk penalty out of production, and North Dakota law also gives a pooled unleased owner a royalty share while costs are recovered. Whether to lease before a pooling hearing or to go unleased is a real decision with real money on both sides; get advice from someone who works in North Dakota specifically, because the rules differ state to state.
Orders are indexed by case or docket number and by the sections they cover. The practical way in is by section: find every order that names your section, township and range, then read the unit boundary and the wells approved in it. Our map shades approved units and lists their wells where the state publishes the geometry; click your section and the units that include it appear with the order reference.
Yes, if your tract is inside the well's spacing unit. Production is shared across the whole unit by acreage, not by where the wellbore runs.
On the NDIC website under the case or docket number. Our map keeps the order reference on each unit so you can go straight to it.
You are pooled anyway, on the statutory terms rather than terms you negotiated. In North Dakota that means an unleased owner who does not participate is carried and pays a risk penalty out of production, and North Dakota law also gives a pooled unleased owner a royalty share while costs are recovered.