How much are mineral rights worth?
Checked July 30, 2026 Updated July 30, 2026 8 sources read
Jul 30 2026
The short answer
There is no honest national price per acre for mineral rights, and this page does not publish one. What an interest is worth depends on what the specific tract produces or is expected to produce, at what price, under what royalty rate, net of what taxes. Change any one of those and the answer changes by an order of magnitude.
What can be published is the arithmetic those four inputs go into, and the federal regulation that defines each term. That is what is below, with worked examples that are tagged as examples so that nothing here can be mistaken for market data.
Checked against the sources named below on .
How do you work out what a mineral interest is worth?
You build it from four inputs rather than looking it up. The value a royalty is calculated on, for oil sold under an arm's length contract on a federal lease, is the gross proceeds accruing under that contract less the transportation and processing allowances the regulations permit. The royalty owed is that value multiplied by the volume and by the lease's royalty rate, and the current federal onshore minimum royalty rate is 12.5 percent. From the resulting income, state production tax and federal income tax come out. Nothing in that chain is a market opinion: each term is defined in a regulation you can read. What no public source gives you is a price per acre, because there is no clearinghouse of what mineral acres actually sold for, so this site publishes the formula and refuses the range.
Checked against the sources named below on .
Why there is no price per acre on this page
Search this question and you will get dollar ranges per acre, often with a confident spread and no source. Follow any of them back far enough and they originate with companies that buy mineral rights. That is not a scandal and it is not dishonest of them, but it does mean the number is an opening bid dressed as a market statistic, and quoting it back to you as a valuation would be doing their negotiating for them.
There is also a structural reason no honest range exists: mineral conveyances are recorded, but the consideration is very often not, and there is no public clearinghouse of what mineral acres actually sold for. So a range cannot be derived from public records the way a house price can. The gap is real, and filling it with an invented number is exactly what this site is built not to do.
The arithmetic, and the regulation that defines it
This is the part that is genuinely public. It is written for federal leases, and it is worth reading even if your interest is not federal, because it is the clearest published statement of what a royalty is actually calculated on.
A federal royalty is paid on gross proceeds, less allowances
verifiedFor oil sold under an arm's-length contract, the value a federal royalty is calculated on is the gross proceeds accruing under that contract, less the transportation and processing allowances the regulations permit. The royalty owed is that value multiplied by the volume and by the lease's royalty rate.
The value of oil under this section for royalty purposes is the gross proceeds accruing to you or your affiliate under the arm's-length contract less applicable allowances determined under § 1206.111 or § 1206.112.
Checked July 29, 2026. Read at ecfr.gov, current edition, on 2026-07-29. Two features matter for anyone checking a statement. Where a lease is sold under several arm's-length contracts, the value is the volume-weighted average of the values for each contract, not a simple average. And this arm's-length basis does not apply where ONRR decides to value the oil under § 1206.105, or where the payor exercises certain options in paragraph (c). NOT READ HERE: the allowance provisions themselves at §§ 1206.111 and 1206.112, the non-arm's-length valuation rule at § 1206.102, the gas valuation subparts, and the Indian lease provisions, which are governed separately and by trust obligations.
The minimum federal onshore royalty is back to 12.5 percent
verifiedA competitive onshore federal oil and gas lease must pay a royalty of not less than 12.5 percent of the amount or value of production, and a noncompetitive lease pays 12.5 percent. The increase to 16 and two-thirds percent enacted in 2022 was repealed in 2025 and the older, lower rate was restored.
A lease shall be conditioned upon the payment of a royalty at a rate of not less than 12.5 percent in amount or value of the production removed or sold from the lease.
Checked July 29, 2026. Read at uscode.house.gov, text in effect on July 28, 2026. The rate appears twice in the section at 12.5 percent: in subsection (b)(1)(A) for competitive leases, quoted above, and again for a lease issued without competitive bidding. The amendment history is the point. Pub. L. 117-169 (the Inflation Reduction Act) section 50262(a)(1)(B) substituted "16 2/3 percent" for "12 1/2 per centum" wherever appearing on August 16, 2022. The Code's own amendment note records that this substitution "was repealed by Pub. L. 119-21, section 50101(a)(1)". The repealing note, set out under 30 U.S.C. 188, reads: "Subsection (a) of section 50262 of Public Law 117-169 (136 Stat. 2056) is repealed, and any provision of law amended or repealed by that subsection is restored or revived as if that subsection had not been enacted into law." Pub. L. 119-21 was approved July 4, 2025. Any guidance written between August 2022 and mid-2025 that gives 16 and two-thirds percent as the federal royalty rate is describing law that has since been repealed.
Put those together and a royalty calculation has a shape. The figures below are invented to show the shape, and they are tagged as examples for that reason. Substitute your own.
| Gross proceeds under the contract | $60.00 per barrel |
|---|---|
| Less permitted allowances | not read for this record |
| Volume attributable to your interest | 100 barrels |
| Value the royalty is paid on | $6,000.00 |
| Royalty rate (federal onshore minimum) | 12.5% |
| Royalty before taxes | $750.00 |
The allowance line is left blank on purpose. Transportation and processing allowances reduce the value a federal royalty is paid on, they change the answer materially, and the two regulations that set them have not been read for this record. A worked example that silently treated them as zero would overstate the royalty, so the line says what it is instead.
Acres, and what a net mineral acre is
Most people asking this question start from acres, and the first step is to turn a tract and a fraction into the acres you actually own. That part is pure arithmetic with no convention in it.
| Gross acres in the tract | 640 acres |
|---|---|
| Your undivided mineral interest | 1/8 |
| Net mineral acres you own | 80 acres |
Net royalty acres are a different matter and this page does not work them. They normalise net mineral acres against a reference royalty rate, the convention for which varies in practice, and nothing has been read on it for this record. It is named in the gaps below rather than guessed at.
What "value" means when someone has to put a number on it
There is one context where a legal standard applies rather than a negotiation: valuing an interest for an estate. The standard is defined, and the definition rules out one thing people often assume is fair.
Fair market value has a legal definition, and a forced sale is not it
verifiedFor estate purposes, fair market value is the price at which property would change hands between a willing buyer and a willing seller, neither under any compulsion and both reasonably informed. The regulation says expressly that fair market value is not to be determined by a forced sale price.
The fair market value is the price at which the property would change hands between a willing buyer and a willing seller, neither being under any compulsion to buy or to sell and both having reasonable knowledge of relevant facts.
Checked July 29, 2026. Read at ecfr.gov on 2026-07-29. The next sentences of the same paragraph are the useful ones for a mineral owner weighing an unsolicited offer: value "is not to be determined by a forced sale price", and not by the sale price in a market other than the one in which the item is most commonly sold. This is the estate valuation standard, and it is the definition courts and appraisers work from. It is not a claim that any particular offer is above or below fair market value, which is a question about a specific tract that this site does not answer.
The exclusion of a forced sale price is the useful half. An offer made to someone who has just inherited an interest, does not know what it produces and has been given a deadline is not, by this standard, evidence of fair market value.
What the state takes off the top
Production tax comes out before you see the income, and it is not the same question in any two states. Three states are on this record and their structures are genuinely different shapes rather than different numbers in the same shape.
Colorado taxes gross income on a bracket and then allows a credit for local ad valorem taxes that is now on a declining statutory schedule rather than the flat figure older guidance still quotes. Texas taxes oil and gas separately at flat rates with a per-barrel floor on oil. Each state's own page carries the full block, the exemptions it has been read for, and the ones it has not. The tax page covers what federal income tax then does to what is left.
Where the price half can be checked
A valuation you cannot check is a valuation you have to trust. Half of this one is checkable against a public federal series.
The price side of a valuation is publicly checkable
verifiedU.S. Energy Information Administration
The Energy Information Administration publishes monthly natural gas price series, by state and for the United States, in dollars per thousand cubic feet, which means the price half of any valuation arithmetic can be checked against a public federal series rather than taken on trust.
Natural Gas Prices (Dollars per Thousand Cubic Feet, except where noted)
Checked July 29, 2026. The page's own heading, units and area selector were read on 2026-07-29. The series is offered for the United States and for each state, on a monthly basis. The data tables themselves require JavaScript and did not render to a plain fetch, so no price figure is taken from this reading and none is published here: what is established is that the series exists, who publishes it, and in what units. That is the part that matters for the argument this section makes, which is that a valuation resting on a public series can be checked and a valuation resting on a buyer's own published range cannot.
No figure from that series is reproduced here, only the fact that it exists and the units it is published in. Looking up the month and the state you care about is a better use of it than any number this page could freeze into place.
What this record does not answer about value
Every page here says what it does not answer yet. A reference that never names its own gaps is one you cannot check.
- What a mineral acre is worth. No dollar figure per acre appears anywhere on this site and none will until there is a public, dated, verifiable source for one. Every published range we have found originates with buyers, and a buyer's published range is a negotiating position rather than a market observation.
- Net royalty acres. Net mineral acres is unambiguous arithmetic, your undivided fraction of the tract, and it is worked as a tagged example on the how-much-are-mineral-rights-worth page rather than recorded as a fact here, because it is arithmetic rather than statute. Net royalty acres is different: it normalises net mineral acres against a reference royalty rate, the convention for that varies in practice, and no source has been read on it. It is worked nowhere on this site for that reason.
- The transportation and processing allowances at 30 C.F.R. 1206.111 and 1206.112, which reduce the value a federal royalty is paid on and therefore change the arithmetic materially.
- Valuation of oil not sold at arm's length, the gas valuation subparts, and Indian lease valuation, which is governed separately and under trust obligations.
- How a mineral interest is characterised for capital gain purposes in any particular owner's hands, and the interaction with section 1231. The statutory definition is on the record; the characterisation is not.
- How depletion is entered on Schedule E, and how a working interest differs from a royalty interest on a return.
- Any actual price. No figure from the federal price series is published here, only the fact that the series exists and in what units.
- State severance and ad valorem taxes as an input to valuation, beyond the rates themselves. Every state on this record now has its production tax rates compared side by side on the how-much-are-mineral-rights-worth page, generated from the state files. What is still not on the record is the ad valorem side: how a state assesses a mineral interest for property tax, and what that does to a valuation. Colorado's declining severance-tax credit for local ad valorem taxes is on its state page, but the underlying local assessment is not, in either state.
The What It's Worth section carries the rest of the valuation record. How the record is kept explains why a page about value contains no prices.
Questions people actually ask
How much are mineral rights worth per acre?
This site does not publish a figure, and the reason is worth more than a figure would be. Every per-acre range in circulation traces back to companies that buy mineral rights, where a published range is a negotiating position rather than a market observation, and there is no public clearinghouse of what mineral acres actually sold for from which an independent range could be derived. What decides the number for your tract is what it produces or is expected to produce, at what price, under what royalty rate, net of production and income tax. The arithmetic for that is on this page and every term in it is defined in a regulation you can read.
How is a mineral royalty actually calculated?
Value multiplied by volume multiplied by the royalty rate. The federal regulations define the value precisely for oil sold under an arm's length contract: it is the gross proceeds accruing under that contract, less the transportation and processing allowances the regulations permit. The royalty rate comes from the lease, and for federal onshore leases the statutory minimum is 12.5 percent, which was raised by the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022 and restored when that increase was repealed in July 2025. State production tax and federal income tax then come out of what you receive.
What is a net mineral acre?
It is the number of acres you actually own the minerals under, which is the gross acreage of the tract multiplied by your undivided fractional interest in the minerals. If a tract is 640 acres and you own an undivided one eighth of the minerals, you hold 80 net mineral acres. That much is arithmetic with no convention in it. Net royalty acres are different: they normalise net mineral acres against a reference royalty rate, the convention for that varies in practice, and this record has not read a source on it, so this page does not work that calculation.
Is an offer to buy my minerals a fair valuation?
Not by itself, and there is a legal standard that says so in one context. For estate purposes fair market value is the price at which property would change hands between a willing buyer and a willing seller, neither under any compulsion and both with reasonable knowledge of the relevant facts, and the regulation states expressly that fair market value is not to be determined by a forced sale price. An unsolicited offer to someone who does not know what the interest produces, and who has been given a deadline, is missing both the informed and the uncompelled part. What an offer does reliably tell you is that someone with better data than yours thinks something near your tract is worth having.
How do I check the price used in a valuation?
Against the federal series, which is public and dated. The Energy Information Administration publishes monthly natural gas price series, by state and for the United States, in dollars per thousand cubic feet, so the price half of any valuation arithmetic can be checked rather than taken on trust. This page deliberately reproduces no figure from it, because a number frozen into a web page is stale the month after it is written and the series itself is not. The volume half is checked against the state regulator's production records, which each state page names.
Sources read
- Electronic Code of Federal Regulations 30 C.F.R. § 1206.101(a) read July 29, 2026
- Electronic Code of Federal Regulations 26 C.F.R. § 20.2031-1(b) read July 29, 2026
- U.S. Energy Information Administration read July 29, 2026
- United States Code, Office of the Law Revision Counsel 30 U.S.C. § 226 read July 29, 2026
- United States Code, Office of the Law Revision Counsel 30 U.S.C. § 188 read July 29, 2026
- Public.Law, Colorado Revised Statutes C.R.S. § 39-29-105 read July 29, 2026
- Oklahoma Statutes, Oklahoma State Legislature 68 O.S. § 1001(B) read July 30, 2026
- Texas Constitution and Statutes, Texas Legislative Council Tex. Tax Code § 202.052(a) read July 30, 2026