I just watched the movie, Giant, and I'm confused about ownership of what lies underneath my property. My dad was a real estate attorney, and I did title searches for awhile, and I always thought people owned everything vertically down and up from a tract of land, but after watching that movie, it makes me think if my neighbor finds oil first on his property, and some of it is coming from under my property, he still has dibs on it. Is this true? I guess mineral rights never came up in my Kentucky experience. Major Kong would probably be able to illuminate this since he's a Texan.

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The mind is a weird and mysterious place

The real answer is "It all depends".
For example, I live in what used to be a coal mining area, indeed there was a mine with a seam that extends under my house. (The bit of the seam that extends under my house was never worked as it is too thin and two fractured to make it economically viable.) I have no rights to coal in that seam, or any other seam, or spoil associated with the getting of the coal, but have some rights to any other minerals not associated with that seam, or the getting of coal from that seam.
So, if someone found a gold bearing mineral seam, that was not a coal seam, I would have a right to a portion of the money earned from any mineral extraction from said seam. And they would have to have my explicit permission to extract said minerals in the first place.
(This is part of the arguments about fracking here in the UK - how do you control where the gas is coming from as unlike a solid mineral gas is mobile, and while the hole may be under property A, the actual gas being extracted may well be coming from a number of other properties in the area, and not all of them may have given their explicit permission to extract gas from below.)

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

I just watched the movie, Giant, and I'm confused about ownership of what lies underneath my property. My dad was a real estate attorney, and I did title searches for awhile, and I always thought people owned everything vertically down and up from a tract of land, but after watching that movie, it makes me think if my neighbor finds oil first on his property, and some of it is coming from under my property, he still has dibs on it. Is this true? I guess mineral rights never came up in my Kentucky experience. Major Kong would probably be able to illuminate this since he's a Texan.

The answer is, indeed, 'it all depends' here in Texas. The mineral rights (the subsurface estate) are frequently separate from the surface estate in Texas, and they are frequently divided up in either total ownership, ownership depending on the 'mineral' (such as oil/gas), or both.

Case in point: some property my dad used to own. The part of the property my dad bought from his dad included 100% of the mineral rights. The rest of the property my dad bought from someone else. On that portion the owner retained 50% of the mineral rights on oil and gas, and only sold my dad 50% of the mineral rights. Why? There were rumors that there might be natural gas on the property, and the seller wanted a cut.

Well, sure enough, a gas exploration company approached my dad and requested an exploration lease. My dad got all the lease payments on the first part (about one third of the total acreage), but only 50% of the lease payments for the remaining two thirds. They found some gas, but it was not economically viable to produce... yet...

Confusing? Nahh...

In parts of Texas, there are gas deposits that are only exploitable by fracking and horizontal drilling... Which part of the gas came from which property (therefore whose mineral rights)?

That is enough to keep a legion of lawyers and accountants quite busy.

Probably one of the most famous sets of mineral rights is the Texas Permanent University Fund. It earns hundreds of millions of dollars for the University of Texas system and the Texas A&M system per year, mostly from mineral rights on oil, gas, sulfur, and water.

<shrug>

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https://youtu.be/iY57ErBkFFE

#Texit

Don't blame me, I voted for Johnson(L) in 2016.

Truth is dangerous... especially when it challenges those in power.

Interesting.

I guess since the part of Kentucky I live in has never been a mining area, is why I never encountered any mineral rights agreements on deeds in chains of title. There's certainly nothing in the legal description of any property I own, going back to the first deed of conveyance, that there's any mineral rights to anybody, so if I went out in the backyard and started digging and oil came up, I guess I'd be in good shape. My title insurance policy covers me as the owner of the property free and clear, but again, it doesn't say anything about mineral rights, so I wonder still how my claim would affect my neighbors. I guess if they saw oil gushing up out of my yard, they could go quickly get a mineral rights agreement drawn up to protect the interest under their land.

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The mind is a weird and mysterious place

Every state is different.

Generally speaking though, you would want to file for a claim to secure mineral rights BEFORE you start exploratory drilling or mining.
That way you could find out if there was a history of mineral easments on previous land titles to your property that may not appear on your current title but may be still in effect.
Edit:
Many "mining or gas&oil claims" take the form of property easements.
Unless you're Jed Clampit and just shootin'at some food.

Generally speaking though, you would want to file for a claim to secure mineral rights BEFORE you start exploratory drilling or mining.

Yes, I agree that would be wise. I certainly don't think I have anything underground; I'm just speculating based on my interest being piqued after watching that movie.

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The mind is a weird and mysterious place

Further I found :

Mineral rights, split estates, abandonment of easements and reversion to surface holders is a complex area of law. Just in general terms, you want to examine the actual chain of title and each deed and other recording. In those deeds other recordings your looking for descriptions of mineral rights agreements, easements and language that indicates how the surface is to be reclaimed, any term of use, any effect of actions that indicate abandonment (whether abandonment is passive (you just don't show up) or whether you have to make an affirmative indication of abandonment). You want to see if any there was any common ownership of the split estate or sevient estate and dominent estate or whether the terms of the easement end upon a certain condition or after a period of time or whether there is any limitation on selling the easement and whether the easement holder has transferred this easement of whether the holder of the mineral rights no longer exists.

Sounds pretty complex.

Further I found :

Mineral rights, split estates, abandonment of easements and reversion to surface holders is a complex area of law. Just in general terms, you want to examine the actual chain of title and each deed and other recording. In those deeds other recordings your looking for descriptions of mineral rights agreements, easements and language that indicates how the surface is to be reclaimed, any term of use, any effect of actions that indicate abandonment (whether abandonment is passive (you just don't show up) or whether you have to make an affirmative indication of abandonment). You want to see if any there was any common ownership of the split estate or sevient estate and dominent estate or whether the terms of the easement end upon a certain condition or after a period of time or whether there is any limitation on selling the easement and whether the easement holder has transferred this easement of whether the holder of the mineral rights no longer exists.

Sounds pretty complex.

As I said:

That is enough to keep a legion of lawyers and accountants quite busy.

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https://youtu.be/iY57ErBkFFE

#Texit

Don't blame me, I voted for Johnson(L) in 2016.

Truth is dangerous... especially when it challenges those in power.