Found in the Land Records
Interests created by a recorded instrument
These are created by a document that gets recorded against the parcel. A mineral rights search reports the ones found of record for the term you select, with the instrument attached.
Recorded when severed
The Mineral Estate
The mineral estate is ownership of the oil, gas, coal, metals, and other substances beneath a tract. It is real property in its own right, and it can be owned, sold, leased, taxed, and inherited entirely separately from the ground above it.
When one person owns both the surface and the minerals the estates are said to be united, and nothing separate appears in the record. The moment a deed conveys or reserves the minerals, a second estate exists, and from then on the two can travel through completely different chains of ownership.
Recorded
Severed Mineral Rights
A severance is the act that splits the minerals from the surface, either by a deed conveying the minerals to someone else or by a deed that sells the surface while reserving the minerals for the seller.
Severances are the single most consequential thing a mineral rights search looks for, and they are frequently decades old. A reservation buried in a 1954 warranty deed still controls who owns the minerals today, which is why the search term you choose matters: a 20-year search cannot report a severance that happened in 1954.
Recorded
Surface Rights
Surface rights are ownership of the ground and everything built on it. Where the minerals have been severed, the surface owner holds their tract subject to the mineral owner’s right to get at what they own.
In most states the mineral estate is the dominant estate, meaning the mineral owner has an implied right to use as much of the surface as is reasonably necessary to develop the minerals. How far that right reaches, and what accommodation the surface owner is owed, is set by state law and varies considerably.
Usually recorded
Oil and Gas Leasehold Interest
An oil and gas lease gives an operator the right to explore for and produce minerals for a term, in exchange for a bonus payment and a royalty. It creates an interest in the land, not merely a contract.
Leases are commonly recorded, though some operators record only a short memorandum of lease rather than the full instrument, so the recorded document may not state every term. Expired and terminated leases often stay on the index long after they have lapsed, which is one reason the recording dates in a report matter as much as the documents.
Usually recorded
Royalty and Non-Participating Royalty Interests
A royalty interest is a share of production free of the cost of drilling. A non-participating royalty interest, or NPRI, carves off that revenue share without carrying any right to lease the minerals or to collect bonus.
Royalty interests are carved out of the mineral estate and conveyed separately, so a single tract can carry a mineral owner, several royalty owners, and a lessee at the same time. Each carve-out is its own recorded instrument, and they accumulate over time.
Recorded in the conveyance
Executive Rights
The executive right is the power to sign a lease on behalf of a mineral interest. It can be separated from the interest it controls, leaving one party owning minerals and another holding the right to lease them.
Where the executive right has been severed, finding the mineral owner is not the same as finding the person who can lease. The separation is created in the conveying instrument itself, so it appears only if that instrument is read rather than merely indexed.
