BOHICA... Oil and Gas Ban, despite the voters saying no in Nov...

[Grant H.]

Mineral owners can come onto a property and exercise their rights to extract minerals. I am no expert on this and do not know the details or procedures. Look at the oil/gas exploration in Weld and Larimer counties. It is common for land to be sold without the mineral rights intact.

Okay, so you don't understand what is happening, and by assumption used the word "usurp" which puts an incorrect connotation of "illegal" or "by force" on the concept.

That was what I figured...

Surface owners are made ABUNDANTLY clear what rights they are buying before purchase. Those rights may be limited to surface only, surface and water, or surface/water/mineral. If someone buys a parcel of land without mineral rights, they have to understand that someone else owns the mineral rights. If they don't, that's just a "head in the sand" attitude that will only harm them.

Once the owner of the mineral rights decides to pursue producing them, they must work with the surface owner to come to a mutually acceptable agreement concerning the use of the surface for well heads, production assets, etc... Most often, this is handled in the form of a land lease for enough space to create an access road and a production pad. This will be a fairly small amount of space, but they are paid (monthly/annually/lump sum) for the use of that land. These agreements include details of all sorts, to include how the land will be returned to existing condition when the wells are P&A'd and the pad is removed (future).

The surface owners have the right to refuse leasing their land to the production group, which often results in the production company making a deal with their neighbors to place the pad there, and then use directional drilling to develop their assets... This leads to a LOT of pissed off idiots who scream about how the O/G companies are "cheating them" and "not paying what they should be" etc... I call them idiots because they had their chance, said no, and then get pissed when their neighbor is getting paid for the land use. (I am friends with a family that did exactly this, and they are still bitter against the company despite having been offered the chance to make the money themselves.)


ETA: I will throw this in there...

Property buyers are made abundantly aware of what they are buying, whether they read the details or not. One of the current issues has some dumb broad who claims "she didn't know she owned mineral rights". This means that she didn't pay attention when purchasing her home however many years ago. It was all handled in the contract.

ETA2: Buying and selling of mineral rights has been going on for a LONG time in the US, one of the last places on the earth where private individuals are allowed to own mineral rights. In the case of my friends family, their family bought a large piece of land several generations ago, and the forebear sold off the mineral rights for liquid capital to build a new shop and start a business out of it. There was a lot of anti-O/G whining from them when they found out they weren't going to be getting any royalties from the production, but they have no legal claim to it. Just because whoever sold them off doesn't own the property anymore doesn't negate the deal that was made for the mineral rights.