How Do I Know if I Have Mineral Rights?
The easiest way to find out is to look through the papers you already have. If you get royalty checks, have an oil and gas lease, or have a deed that mentions minerals, you most likely own mineral rights.
What are the signs that you own mineral rights?
Five practical signs point to mineral rights in your name, and most owners recognize at least one of them.
- Royalty payments arriving from an oil or gas operator
- Statements or division orders addressed to you by name
- Offers to lease or buy that reach you unprompted
- Mineral deeds or old lease copies in family paperwork
- A will or probate file that lists an interest in minerals
Keep in mind a company that buys mineral rights may send an offer based on old or incomplete records. A royalty check shows your share of one well or unit, but not everything you own or how many acres it covers.
Do you own mineral rights if you own the property?
Owning the property does not automatically mean you own the mineral rights under it. The surface and mineral property start out together, and a previous owner can sell one while keeping the other. Once that split has happened it stays, and every later sale of the surface passes on the surface alone.
This split is called a severed or split estate, and it is recognized in every state. It works the other way around too. Plenty of people own minerals under land they have never set foot on, usually because the interest was passed down while the surface was sold off generations ago.
Which documents show whether you have mineral rights?
Three kinds of documents show whether you have mineral rights: deeds, leases and revenue statements. All three sit with the owner rather than somewhere you have to go looking.
If leased it is important to have it on hand because most leases recorded in a courthouse are only memorandums that omit important information like royalty lease rate and lease bonus amount.
Does your deed show if the mineral rights were severed?
A deed can show whether the minerals were severed, but it does not always say so. A deed that reserves or excepts the oil, gas and other minerals tells you the seller kept them. A deed that says nothing about minerals is not an answer either way, because a severance further back in the chain does not have to reappear in later deeds.
What is the legal description on your deed?
The legal description is the wording on your deed that describes the location of the land, and it's commonly asked for by buyers. About 30 states use the Public Land Survey System, which locates land by section, township and range. One section is roughly 640 acres or one square mile, and 36 of them make up a township in a six by six mile grid.
Texas works differently. It kept its own General Land Office when it joined the Union in 1845, so Texas deeds identify land by survey name and abstract number rather than by section and township.
Which documents apply if you inherited mineral rights?
For inherited mineral rights the relevant papers are the probate file or an affidavit of heirship. Those are what show the interest passed to you from the person who died. Wills and estate inventories help too, because they often name a mineral interest that nobody in the family had thought about at the time.
How do you get a copy of your royalty statement?
Royalty statements can be pulled online from most operators, often through a portal such as EnergyLink. The statement names the well, the operator and your decimal interest, which is the number the operator uses to calculate what it pays you. If the checks stopped years ago, the older statements still tell you what was once in your name.
What does it mean if your mineral rights are leased?
A lease means an operator holds the right to drill your minerals for a period, and you still own the minerals underneath it. A lease is not necessarily short. One that is held by production can run for decades as long as the wells keep producing.
If nothing is drilled and the operator does not extend the lease, the minerals are free to be leased again to another operator. Your royalty rate, if leased, is set in that lease document, which is one reason the lease copy is worth finding.
Who does the title research on your mineral rights?
The buyer does the title research on your mineral rights, and the buyer pays for it. That covers the curative work as well, which is the part that closes gaps in the chain so a sale can go through.
Title research does more than confirm a name. It also turns up judgments and liens against an interest, and those can make a transaction uneconomic even when the ownership itself is clear.
You may be asked to help by supplying documentation you already have. It is fair to expect some back and forth rather than a single signature, because the work varies with how many times an interest has been divided.
How much of the mineral rights do you own?
How much of the mineral rights you own is usually a fraction rather than a whole tract. Each generation that passes an interest down divides it further, so it is normal for several relatives to each hold a piece of the same original tract.
Take a family that holds the minerals under 320 acres. Split equally among four children, each one ends up with 80 net mineral acres. Split equally again among four children in the next generation, that becomes 20 net mineral acres per person, or one sixteenth of the original tract.
What if you do not own the mineral rights?
Finding out you do not own the mineral rights is not an uncommon situation, and it is better to establish it early than late. If the minerals were severed generations ago, the surface you own carries no ownership to the minerals underneath it.
It can also land somewhere in between. You may own a smaller share than you expected, or overriding royalty interest rather than a mineral interest, which are not the same thing and do not carry the same rights.
What to do once you know you own mineral rights
Once you know you own mineral rights you typically have three routes: keep them, lease them if an operator is interested, or sell. Which one makes sense depends on what the wells around you are doing and on what you want the money for.
If you want a number to work with, we will put one together for free and without obligation. We pull the public records, look at the well permits and the current production around your tract, and make an offer if the rights are interesting to us. You talk to the owner of the business, not a call center. Longhorn Minerals provides free mineral rights valuations and buys mineral rights from willing sellers.