Oil and gas leases may be acknowledged or proved, certified and recorded in like manner and with like effect, as grants of real property. However, an oil and gas lease may be recorded and constructive notice of the same and the contents of that lease given in the following manner:
Any person may record in the office of county recorder of any county fictitious oil and gas leases. Those fictitious oil and gas leases need not be acknowledged, or proved, or certified, to be recorded or entitled to record. Oil and gas leases shall have noted upon the face thereof that they are fictitious. The county recorder shall index and record fictitious oil and gas leases in the same manner as other oil and gas leases are recorded, and shall note on all indices and records of the same that they are fictitious. Thereafter, any of the provisions of any recorded fictitious oil and gas lease may be included for any and all purposes in any oil and gas lease by reference therein to those provisions, without setting the same forth in full, if the fictitious oil and gas lease is of record in the county in which the oil and gas lease adopting or including by reference any of the provisions of the lease is recorded. The reference shall contain a statement, as to each county in which the oil and gas lease containing such a reference is recorded, of the date the fictitious oil and gas lease was recorded, the county recorder’s office in which it is recorded, and the book or volume and the first page of the records or the recorder’s instrument number in the recorder’s office in which the fictitious oil and gas lease was recorded, and a statement by paragraph numbers or any other method that will definitely identify the same, of the specific provisions of any fictitious oil and gas lease that are being adopted and included therein. The recording of any oil and gas lease which has included any provisions by reference shall operate as constructive notice of the whole including the terms, as a part of the written contents of any oil and gas lease, of any provisions so included by reference as though the same were written in full therein. The parties bound or to be bound by provisions so adopted and included by reference shall be bound thereby in the same manner and with like effect for all purposes as though the provisions had been and were set forth in full in the oil and gas lease.
(Amended by Stats. 2009, Ch. 54, Sec. 4. (SB 544) Effective January 1, 2010.)