Quote Originally Posted by th3w01f View Post
I was able to verity that the seller doesn't own the rights, hence they can't convey them to me.
I would imagine that's probably the case with most small property transfers and basically it means that the language in the contract is meaningless boilerplate that somebody probably put in there because they thought it was a good idea and nobody else ever thought to take out.

The seller or real estate company probably just wanted to make it absolutely clear to the buyer that what they were conveying was the surface estate only, no mineral rights of any kind went with it. Overkill, perhaps, but in our litigious society not necessarily a bad idea.