California mineral rights

Cal. Civ. Code § 883.220

The owner of real property subject to a mineral right may bring an action to terminate the mineral right if it is dormant. A mineral right is dormant only if ALL of three conditions are satisfied for the twenty years immediately preceding the commencement of the action: there is no production of the minerals and no exploration, drilling, mining, development or other operations affecting them, whether on or below the surface of that property or on other property and whether or not unitized or pooled with it; no separate property tax assessment is made of the mineral right, or if one is made no taxes are paid on it; and no instrument creating, reserving, transferring or otherwise evidencing the mineral right is recorded. The action is brought in the superior court of the county where the property is, in the same manner and subject to the same procedure as a quiet title action so far as applicable. A mineral right terminated under the article is unenforceable and deemed to have expired, and the court order is equivalent for all purposes to a conveyance of the mineral right to the owner of the real property. The article applies to all mineral rights whether executed or recorded before, on or after January 1, 1985.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at Civil Code sections 883.210, 883.220, 883.240, 883.260 and 883.270. Two things distinguish this from the other lapse statutes on this record and both make it harder to lose a California interest. The conditions are CONJUNCTIVE, so a mineral owner defeats the whole thing by satisfying any one of the three: producing, being separately assessed and paying the tax, or having any instrument evidencing the right recorded in the period. Michigan, Indiana and Kansas all run off a single list of qualifying uses where doing any one is enough to save you, which sounds similar but is not: there the surface owner needs only the absence of every listed use, here the surface owner needs the absence of all three categories at once, and the third is satisfied by a recording that nobody had to make for this purpose. And nothing happens automatically. Michigan vests the interest with no warning and Indiana extinguishes it on the clock alone; California requires the surface owner to file a quiet title action in the superior court and win it. What the order does when it comes is stated in unusually plain terms: it is equivalent for all purposes to a conveyance of the mineral right to the surface owner.

Cal. Civ. Code § 883.250

An owner of a mineral right may at any time record a notice of intent to preserve it. In place of the statement of the character of the interest and the record location of the documents creating it, and in place of the legal description of the real property that the general marketable title provisions would otherwise require, a notice of intent to preserve a mineral right may refer generally and without specificity to any or all mineral rights the claimant claims in any real property situated in the county. A mineral right is not dormant if such a notice is recorded within the twenty years immediately preceding commencement of the action, or if one is recorded after the action has commenced under the late notice provision. In an action to terminate a mineral right the court SHALL permit the owner of the mineral right to record a late notice of intent to preserve it as a condition of dismissal of the action, on payment into court, for the benefit of the owner of the real property, of the litigation expenses attributable to the mineral right or the part of it the notice covers. Litigation expenses means recoverable costs and expenses reasonably and necessarily incurred in preparation for the action, including a reasonable attorney's fee.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at Civil Code sections 883.230 and 883.250. Every lapse state on this record gives a mineral owner something to file, and the differences between them are all about WHEN it is too late. Ohio and North Dakota give sixty days from a notice. Kansas gives sixty days from a published notice or from receiving actual knowledge where nothing was published, which this record has called the most protective limb of any lapse statute here. California is later still and differently shaped: the mineral owner can file after the lawsuit has already been brought, the court has no discretion to refuse, and the price is the surface owner's reasonable costs and attorney's fees. That converts what is elsewhere a forfeiture into something closer to a bill. The other half is a quiet practical gift to owners of scattered fractional interests: the preserving notice may refer generally and without specificity to any or all mineral rights the claimant claims anywhere in the county, so an owner who does not know exactly what they hold, which is the usual condition of an inherited interest, can still preserve it. WHAT IS NOT READ: section 880.330, which sets the general contents of such a notice, and section 880.370, the recording grace period the article is expressly subject to.

Cal. Civ. Code § 883.120

The chapter does not apply to a mineral right reserved to the United States, whether in a patent, pursuant to federal law, or otherwise, nor to an oil or gas lease, mining claim or other mineral right of a person entitled pursuant to such a reservation, to the extent the marketable title provisions provide. It also does not apply to a mineral right of the state or a local public entity, or of any other person, to that same extent. Separately, nothing in the chapter limits or affects the common law governing abandonment of a mineral right, or any other procedure provided by statute for clearing an abandoned mineral right from title to real property.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at Civil Code sections 883.120 and 883.130, and both belong on the page for the same reason: they tell a reader what this chapter cannot do for them. The first is the connection between this page and the federal record on this site. A California surface owner whose minerals were reserved to the United States in the patent cannot use this article at all, and no amount of dormancy will change that, which is the same conclusion the federal reservations page reaches by a different route. The second matters because it stops the article being read as a complete code: the common law of abandonment survives it, and so does any other statutory clearing procedure. So the existence of this chapter is not authority that a dormant California mineral right can only be ended this way. WHAT IS NOT READ: section 880.240, which both exclusions are measured by, and the common law of abandonment itself, since nothing was fetched from a California court.

Cal. Civ. Code § 883.110

For the chapter that governs terminating a dormant mineral right, a mineral right means an interest in minerals, regardless of character, whether fugacious or nonfugacious, organic or inorganic, that is created by grant or reservation, regardless of form, whether a fee or lesser interest, mineral, royalty or leasehold, absolute or fractional, corporeal or incorporeal, and it includes express or implied appurtenant surface rights.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at Civil Code section 883.110. This is the widest statutory definition of a severed mineral interest on this record and it is worth reading twice, because most of the definitions here are narrow on purpose. New Mexico defines an owner by the right to drill. Montana defines an oil and gas estate as ownership of what lies under a tract. Louisiana refuses the category altogether. California instead sweeps in every axis on which such an interest can vary: what the substance is, how the interest was created, what form it takes, whether it is whole or fractional, and whether it is corporeal or incorporeal. The last clause is the one to carry away, because it decides arguments rather than describing them: the mineral right INCLUDES express or implied appurtenant surface rights. A California mineral owner's right to get at the minerals is inside the definition of the thing they own. Note the scope limit in the section's own opening words: this definition governs that chapter, so it is the definition used when deciding what can be terminated as dormant, and this record does not extend it beyond that.

Cal. Civ. Code § 883.140

If the term of a mineral right lease has expired or the lease has been abandoned by the lessee, the lessee must within thirty days after demand by the lessor execute, acknowledge and deliver, or cause to be recorded, a deed quitclaiming all interest in the mineral rights the lease covered. Where the expiration or abandonment covers less than the lessee's whole interest, the lessee must deliver an appropriate instrument or notice of surrender or termination covering the part that has ended. A lessee who fails to comply is liable for all damages the lessor sustains as a result, including court costs and reasonable attorney's fees in an action to clear title, and forfeits a further one hundred and fifty dollars to the lessor. Lessee includes an assignee or other successor, and lessor includes a successor, heir or grantee. Nothing in the section makes the quitclaim, or a demand for one, a condition precedent to an action to clear the lessor's title.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at Civil Code section 883.140. This addresses a complaint that turns up constantly and that most of this record cannot answer: a lease that everyone agrees is over but that still sits in the records clouding the title, because nobody made the lessee release it. California puts a thirty day clock on it, runs the clock from the lessor's demand rather than from the expiry, binds assignees and successors on both sides, and makes the sanction attorney's fees rather than a token. The last subsection is the one a lawyer will want: the demand is NOT a condition precedent, so a lessor who never made one has not lost the right to sue to clear title. WHAT IS NOT READ: whether a California court has construed what abandonment by the lessee means here, and the fixed sum has not been adjusted in the text as read, so it is stated as the statute states it rather than in present-day terms.

Cal. Pub. Res. Code § 3106

It is declared a policy of the state that the grant in an oil and gas lease or contract to a lessee or operator of the right or power, in substance, to explore for and remove all hydrocarbons from any lands in the state is, in the absence of an express provision to the contrary in the lease or contract, deemed to allow the lessee or contractor and their successors or assigns to do what a prudent operator using reasonable diligence would do, having in mind the best interests of the lessor, the lessee and the state in producing and removing hydrocarbons. That is expressly declared to include the injection of air, gas, water or other fluids into the productive strata, the application of pressure, heat or other means to reduce the viscosity of the hydrocarbons, the supplying of additional motive force, and the creating of enlarged or new channels for underground movement of hydrocarbons into production wells, in each case where the method has been approved by the supervisor. Nothing in the section imposes a legal duty on the lessee or contractor to conduct any of those operations. The supervisor is separately directed to supervise drilling, operation, maintenance and abandonment so as to prevent, as far as possible, damage to life, health, property and natural resources.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at Public Resources Code section 3106, subsections (a) and (b). This record now holds three statutory rules of construction for mineral instruments and they do not point the same way, which is the reason to publish this one. Kentucky's constitution reads an old coal severance DOWN, presuming the parties meant only the extraction methods commonly in use in the area at the time. Virginia's code settles what a coal conveyance does not reach at all. California reads an oil and gas lease UP: silence in the instrument becomes permission to do what a prudent operator would do, and the statute then lists enhanced recovery techniques the parties may never have contemplated. Three limits are in the text and each matters. It applies to a lease or contract rather than to a severance deed. It yields to an express provision to the contrary, so the drafting cure is available. And the listed methods require the supervisor's approval. Note also what the section refuses to do: it creates no duty to develop, which is the opposite of what Kansas legislated. WHAT IS NOT READ: whether a California court has applied subsection (b), and what "best interests of the lessor" has been held to require.

Cal. Pub. Res. Code § 3284

California defines a surface property owner as the owner of real property shown on the latest equalized assessment roll, or the owner of record according to the county assessor or tax collector where more recent information exists. Two duties are then keyed to distance rather than to ownership of the mineral estate. In a health protection zone, meaning the area within 3,200 feet of a sensitive receptor such as a residence, a school, a park, a hospital, a prison or any building housing a business open to the public, an operator must before commencing work requiring a notice of intention contact property owners AND TENANTS within a 3,200 foot radius of the wellhead in writing with a record of delivery, at least thirty days beforehand, and offer to sample and test water wells or surface water on their property before and after drilling. If sampling is requested in time, drilling may not commence until a baseline sample has been collected, and the operator bears the cost. Separately, for a well stimulation treatment, it is the policy of the state that a copy of the approved permit and information on the available water sampling and testing be provided to every tenant of the surface property and every surface property owner whose property line is within a 1,500 foot radius of the wellhead or within 500 feet of the horizontal projection of the well, the notification is performed by an independent entity the operator contracts and the division may audit, and the treatment may not commence before thirty calendar days after the copies are provided.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at Public Resources Code sections 3156, 3160 and 3280 to 3284. THIS RULE CORRECTS A DRAFT OF THIS PAGE THAT WAS WRONG, and the mistake is worth recording because it is the mistake this site is built to avoid. The chapter was searched for the phrase 'surface owner', which appears in it zero times, and the first draft concluded that California gives a surface owner nothing. California says 'surface PROPERTY owner', and once that is read there is a good deal here. The correction changes the finding rather than only the wording. What California actually does is unlike the surface damage states on this record. Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, West Virginia, Kentucky and Wyoming all attach the operator duty to the person who owns the surface, because the premise is a split estate and the question is what one estate owes the other. California attaches it to PROXIMITY, and extends it to tenants, who own nothing at all. A renter a thousand feet from the wellhead is owed the notice and may request the water testing; a surface owner two miles away is owed neither. The subject of the protection is a person near a well, not an estate in land. Note also what is absent: nothing read in the chapter gives a California surface owner compensation for surface damage. Every use of 'damages' and of 'compensation' in the chapter was read, and they concern blowout insurance, eminent domain security, civil penalties and liability for violations, not a landowner damages regime. WHAT IS NOT READ: the notice of intention section itself, the local ordinances that in California often decide these questions, and any decision applying the health protection zone article, which took effect in June 2024 after a referendum petition against it was withdrawn.

Cal. Civ. Code § 1214

Every conveyance of real property or an estate for years in it, other than a lease for a term not exceeding one year, is void as against any subsequent purchaser or mortgagee of the same property or any part of it, in good faith and for a valuable consideration, whose conveyance is first duly recorded, and as against any judgment affecting the title unless the conveyance was duly recorded before the record of notice of action. Every conveyance acknowledged or proved and certified and recorded as prescribed by law is, from the time it is filed with the recorder for record, constructive notice of its contents to subsequent purchasers and mortgagees, and a certified copy of such a recorded conveyance may be recorded in any other county with the same force and effect as the original. Conveyance for these two sections embraces every instrument in writing by which any estate or interest in real property is created, aliened, mortgaged or encumbered, or by which the title to any real property may be affected, except wills.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at Civil Code sections 1213, 1214 and 1215. This is the race-notice shape, the same as Colorado, Michigan, Montana, North Dakota, Alaska and Wyoming: the later claimant must be in good faith, must have given value, and must have recorded first. Two California specifics are worth carrying. The priority rule reaches JUDGMENTS as well as purchasers, so an unrecorded conveyance also loses to a judgment affecting the title unless it was recorded before the notice of action went on the record, which is a limb this record has not seen stated in the same breath elsewhere. And the definition section matters more here than the usual boilerplate, because it settles that a mineral deed or reservation is a conveyance for these purposes: it embraces every instrument by which any estate or interest in real property is created, aliened, mortgaged or encumbered, or by which title may be affected, and excludes only wills. WHAT IS NOT READ: any California decision applying the sections, and the priority rules for a mineral right specifically as against the general marketable title provisions.

Cal. Pub. Res. Code § 3402

California imposes annually on the person operating each oil well in the state, or owning royalty or other interests in respect of the production from the well, a charge computed at a uniform rate per barrel of oil produced in the preceding calendar year, and a corresponding charge on each gas well at a uniform rate per ten thousand cubic feet. The charge is apportioned among all those persons in fractional amounts proportionate to their respective fractional interests in the production, but the whole of it is payable by the operator, who withholds the royalty and other interest owners' proportionate shares from the amounts otherwise payable or deliverable to them. The rate is not fixed in the statute: each year the department, acting with the Department of Finance, estimates what will be required to carry out the chapter, then determines the rate or rates that will produce that sum, and must post the information supporting the rate on a publicly available part of its website. The proceeds are used exclusively to support the department that supervises oil and gas operations, the state and regional water boards for their oil and gas related activities, and the air board and the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment for theirs. The charge is in addition to any and all other charges, taxes, assessments or licenses.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at Public Resources Code sections 3400, 3401, 3402, 3403, 3404, 3410 and 3412. Two findings sit here and the second is the surprising one. FIRST, on the question this site asks of every state, California answers it in the imposing section rather than leaving it to a withholding provision: the charge is imposed on the operator OR on anyone owning royalty or other interests, it is apportioned by fractional interest, and the operator withholds the royalty owner's share. So it comes out of the cheque. SECOND, this is not a severance tax and does not behave like one. It is a cost recovery levy whose rate is whatever will fund the regulator that year, so it moves with the department's budget rather than with the price of oil or the value of what is produced. Pennsylvania is the only other state on this record with no charge measured on value or volume at state level, and Pennsylvania's is a flat per well fee a county may elect to impose; California's is measured on volume but set by the cost of regulation. THE NEGATIVE, and how it was established: the contents of division 2 of the Revenue and Taxation Code, headed Other Taxes, were enumerated and hold 51 parts. There is no oil and gas severance or production tax among them. There is a Timber Yield Tax at part 18.5 and a Lithium Extraction Tax Law at part 25, so California does tax the severance of two things; oil and gas are not among them. WHAT IS NOT READ: the current rate, which is set annually and was not fetched; ad valorem property taxation of mineral interests under division 1; and the oil spill response, prevention and administration fees at part 24.

Cal. Rev. & Tax. Code §§ 47010 to 47020 (Lithium Extraction Tax Law)

Beginning January 1, 2023 a producer must pay a lithium extraction excise tax on each metric ton of lithium carbonate equivalent extracted from geothermal fluid, spodumene ore, rock, minerals, clay or any other naturally occurring substance in the state. The rate rises with lifetime cumulative production by that producer rather than with price: four hundred dollars per metric ton up to twenty thousand tonnes, six hundred over twenty thousand and up to thirty thousand, and eight hundred above thirty thousand. Where the permit or ownership of a mine, extraction facility or well changes, the cumulative amount previously reported is assumed to be thirty thousand metric tons. From January 1, 2025 the rates are adjusted annually by the department for cost of living by reference to the California Consumer Price Index for all urban consumers, rounded to the nearest whole dollar. Lithium and lithium compounds are converted to lithium carbonate equivalent by statutory conversion factors, including 5.323 for lithium itself and 0.871 for lithium chloride. Except for sales and use taxes, the taxes imposed are in lieu of all county, municipal or district taxes on lithium extraction or storage by producers, and the Legislature states its intent to pre-empt inconsistent local taxes.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read in the Lithium Extraction Tax Law at Revenue and Taxation Code sections 47010, 47015 and 47020. This is on the record for two reasons and neither is that anyone reading this page owns lithium. The first is that it completes the tax picture honestly: it would be wrong to say California does not tax mineral severance, because it does, and the way to state that accurately is to name what it taxes. The second is that the design is unlike any production tax on this record. Every other rate here moves with price or with the value of the product; this one moves with how much the producer has ever extracted, on a lifetime cumulative ladder, so the rate a producer pays reflects the maturity of their operation rather than the market. The transfer rule closes the obvious avoidance route by presuming a new permit holder has already extracted thirty thousand tonnes, which puts them straight into the top bracket. WHAT IS NOT READ: the definitions and administration chapters of the same part, any exemptions, the current inflation-adjusted rate, and the Timber Yield Tax at part 18.5, which is the other severance California taxes and which this record has seen only as a heading in the contents.