Lucas Ray

Lucas Ray examines title for oil and gas clients. He works through county records to determine who owns what in the land, then runs the fractional math that turns layered mineral and leasehold histories into ownership clients can rely on. An accounting background makes the numbers his strong suit, and he brings a quiet, heads-down focus to every chain of title he touches. His work spans drilling, division order, leasehold and acquisition title opinions for clients ranging from publicly traded producers to private equity-backed start-ups.

Drilling, Division Order and Leasehold Title Opinions

Most of Lucas’s day is spent inside the title history: deeds, leases, assignments, wills and probates pulled from the county where the land sits. He examines each instrument to identify mineral and leasehold interest owners, then calculates ownership down to the decimal, where the math gets complicated fast. Some chains run back to Spanish land grants, with nearly two centuries of conveyances, disputes and inheritances stacked on top. When the record shows a problem, such as a gap in the chain or an instrument recorded incorrectly, he writes a requirement spelling out exactly what the client needs to correct.

Flow Chart Title Chains That Trace Every Interest

Title rarely moves in a straight line. Interests get split by inheritance, sold off in pieces and pieced back together decades later. A traditional long-form opinion still lists it all by date, so the reader has to hunt 20 entries down to find where one owner’s share went next. Lucas builds opinions in Feighny Hartle’s flow chart format instead, tracing each owner’s interest from the instrument that created it to the party holding it today. Having written opinions both ways, he knows the payoff: a landman can follow a single interest from start to finish in minutes, with the math behind every decimal right there to check. Clients get an opinion they can verify, not just one they have to trust.

Acquisition Due Diligence and Title Defect Analysis

A buyer picking up a small interest doesn’t need an opinion on the whole tract; it needs to know whether the slice it’s paying for is sound. Lucas focuses the review on that exact interest, whether minerals, overriding royalty or a partial working interest, and works through existing opinions, often written by other firms, to find the defects no one ever cured. Each one is measured against the defect provisions in the purchase and sale agreement, so his defect notices carry weight at the negotiating table and turn directly into price adjustments. As the day-to-day contact for an acquisition-focused buyer, he wrote position memos that often recommended walking away, the kind of candid call that protects capital as much as any closed deal.

Federal Lease Title in New Mexico

Cross the state line into New Mexico and the rules of title change. Much of the acreage is federal, so leases come from the federal government and the records that matter sit in federal offices as well as the county courthouse; an examiner who checks only one set misses half the story. Lucas has worked extensively on New Mexico matters alongside FH attorneys licensed there, who review and sign the final opinion, and has supported Wyoming title work as well. For operators whose acreage straddles the Texas-New Mexico line, that means one team that reconciles federal and county records into a single, reliable ownership picture.