I am looking to purchase a piece of land in Anderson County and the seller and I have agreed on all but one thing. The seller is keeping all 100 percent of mineral rights and that is fine with me. The line item in the contract that says the seller does or does not waive rights for ingress and egress for the mineral rights and use of surface materials has got me stumped. I am trying to get him to waive the rights on that line item just to protect myself in some way but I’m not sure that this line item even matters much since mineral rights are dominant in Texas. What am I missing? Thank you in advance.
It is in your interest to have a waiver of surface use. This enables you to limit and set location of any roads or surface use. Appropriate language needs to be in the deed and you should have an oil and gas attorney write that. That is generally not in the expertise of a title company which deals with traditional deeds. The effectiveness will depend on what fractional interest the seller owns (100% vs 1/2 or 1/10) and you would need to research the mineral title history to determine that as surface and minerals are so often traded separately.
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If a seller reserves the hard minerals with the surface estate, in Texas, then I would not consider that the buyer would own the surface. It’s a good idea in Texas to have the minerals separate from the surface.
Generally a reservation of minerals in Texas is for oil, gas, and other non-surface minerals. However, those minerals are dominant and the operator can use the surface. Many operators have been abusive in that use as they cut access roads diagonally across land, make large pads, do not clean up the area, and may not compensate the surface owner. Severance of mineral estate is not good for the owner of the remainder surface in an active oil and gas area.
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