Did you know that the United States is the only country that lets individuals and private companies own the minerals beneath their land? In other countries even if there are minerals on your property those belong to the government or the monarchy. If you have recently been working on your property and noticed that you struck black gold AKA oil, it is important to thoroughly understand more about your mineral rights as the property owner.
Keep reading to learn more about mineral rights vs property rights.
Getting Mineral Rights
If you find any evidence that there are oil reserves on your property you want to take action quickly in order to secure your mineral rights. Doing this will allow you to profit from it because owning the land does not automatically mean that you also own any minerals beneath your land.
Mineral rights and property rights are separately. The best thing to do is to to contact an experienced attorney that understands the ins and outs of mineral rights in your area. If you discover that you already own the mineral rights of the property then you can opt to lease or sell the deed of your land to oil companies that have the resources to dig.
Another option is to extract the oil yourself. If you go this route, you will need large and expensive equipment in order to tackle the task at hand. Sometimes you will also need to invest in heat exchangers because this is part of the gas and oil production.
Two Types of Rights
Some homeowners are not aware that there are two types of rights that might be included with the land that you own. Sometimes you may own the rights to everything on the surface but you might have zero rights to any resources that are found underground like any gas, oil, or minerals.
Usually, if you own property in the United States you own both the mineral rights and surface rights unless the mineral rights are sold to someone else before you bought your property. If you own both surface and mineral rights this is called a unified estate and if you only own surafce and someone else owns the resources then this is called a split estate.
As a homeowner you have the option to lease the mineral rights to oil or gas companies instead of selling your rights. This will allow you to keep some of the profits.
Feeling Like a Mineral Rights Pro?
We hope that now that we went over everything there is to know about mineral rights, you can make informed decisions if you have found that there are minerals underneath your own property. It is always wise to contact an attorney to make sure you learn what your rights are where you live.
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