I grew up in Kentucky among people who were dirt poor and largely uneducated. But most of them knew enough to make sure they had the mineral rights to property they bought, lest they wake up one morning and find a coal company strip mining in the front yard. They were apparently smarter than Mars Candy multi-billionaire Forrest Mars:
However, in recent years, exploration began pushing north into Montana. Mars' ranch soon began to push back, with lawsuits against the companies involved.
Despite his hefty legal and financial resources, Mars' influence on the rolling plains of southeastern Montana could be put to the test by state and federal laws favoring oil and gas development.
Under a property regime known as split estates, landowners in many Western states do not necessarily control the minerals beneath their property. In the Diamond Cross case, Fidelity and another company, Pinnacle Gas Resources, have oil and gas leases on the ranch that predate Mars' ownership, according to public records and company officials.
State law gives the companies the right to enter Mars' land to drill on those leases. So far, however, he has held them at bay.
"Forrest has a lot of money, but he's in the same boat as anybody else," said Beth Kaeding, chairwoman of the Northern Plains Resource Council, a conservation group of which Mars is a member.
"If you don't own the mineral rights, it doesn't matter how huge your ranch is, how politically powerful you are, how much money you have," Kaeding said. "Mineral rights trump surface rights."
That has always been the case, in my experience. Mineral rights do trump surface rights. Guess we'll see if a few billion dollars of candy money will change that. I have mixed feelings about the case -- energy exploration and property rights are both important. But, for goodness sake, know what you're agreeing to when you buy something. Read the stupid agreement.
Comments
Any such encumbrance on property for sale should be a) investigated as part of the usual process of clearing the title AND b) required as a key element of every property seller's legal obligation to provide full disclosure.
I know that if and when I buy another property, house or no house, I'll assure myself that mineral rights are mine or find another plot of ground. One might wonder how deep the a "surface buyer's" rights go? As deep as the garden? As deep as the tree roots? As deep as a country well? What if the mineral is not far below, like oil, but near the surface, like gold? How deep would my gold rights go, vs. the guy with the non-surface mineral claim?
Foolishness, except perhaps in the biggest of private properties, where eminent domain might have some plausible excuse to "trump" our right to private property. I wonder just what interests decided mineral rights should "trump" anything, ever. I can guess.