Kansas mineral rights

K.S.A. § 55-1602

An interest in coal, oil, gas or other minerals, if unused for twenty years, lapses unless a statement of claim is filed, and the ownership reverts to the current surface owner. A mineral interest is considered used when any minerals are produced under it; when operations are being conducted on it for injection, withdrawal, storage or disposal of water, gas or other fluid substances; when rentals or royalties are being paid by the owner of the interest to delay or enjoy the use of the mineral rights; when the rights are being exercised on a tract the interest may be unitized or pooled with for production; in the case of coal or other solid minerals, when there is production from a common vein or seam by the owners of the mineral interests; or when taxes are paid on the mineral interest by its owner. Any use pursuant to or authorised by the instrument creating the interest continues all the rights the instrument granted.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at sections 55-1602 and 55-1603 on the Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes site. The list of six uses is close to Indiana's and it includes the one that saves the most interests in practice: PAYING THE TAX on the interest counts. That puts Kansas with Indiana and against Nebraska, which lets a severed interest be entered on the county tax list and then does not count paying it as a use, so an owner can be assessed and paying and still lose the interest. Two further points from the text. The definition covers coal, oil, gas OR OTHER MINERALS, so unlike Michigan the act is not confined to oil and gas. And the reversion is to the CURRENT surface owner, which is Ohio's, North Dakota's, Michigan's and Nebraska's destination and not Indiana's, whose statute sends a lapsed interest to the owner of the interest out of which it was carved. WHAT IS NOT READ: section 55-1607, and any Kansas decision beyond the annotation the revisor prints on section 55-1601, which cites Scully v. Overall for the proposition that an interest lapses and reverts if unused for twenty years with no claim filed.

K.S.A. § 55-1604

A mineral interest owner may file a statement of claim before the end of the twenty year period, giving the owner's name and address and a description of the land, in the office of the register of deeds of the county where the land is. On filing in time the interest is treated as having been used on the date of filing. Failure to file in time does not extinguish the interest if the owner files within sixty days after publication of a notice of lapse, or within sixty days after receiving actual knowledge that the interest had lapsed where no notice is published. A person who will succeed to the ownership must publish notice of the lapse in a newspaper of general circulation in the county and, where the owner's address is shown of record or can be determined on reasonable inquiry, mail a copy by restricted mail within ten days of publication. Filing a copy of the notice with an affidavit of publication and service makes the record prima facie evidence in any legal proceeding that notice was given, and the register of deeds notes the statement of claim or the affidavit in the margin of the instrument that created the interest.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at sections 55-1604, 55-1605 and 55-1606. The second limb of the quoted subsection is the part with no counterpart on this record and it is worth reading twice: where no notice is published at all, the owner still has sixty days from RECEIVING ACTUAL KNOWLEDGE that the interest had lapsed. Ohio and North Dakota both give sixty days from a notice, so an owner who is never noticed is protected only to the extent the notice procedure is enforced. Kansas ties the second chance to the owner learning of it rather than to anybody having told them, which means a Kansas interest is not quietly gone while its owner is unaware. Note also the marginal notation duty in section 55-1606, which puts both the claim and the lapse notice on the face of the record of the original instrument, so a title searcher meets them where they are looking. WHAT IS NOT READ: whether any Kansas decision has construed "actual knowledge" here, and what happens between lapse and the filing of a late claim.

K.S.A. § 55-223

As a matter of Kansas public policy, all oil and gas leases and subleases for the exploration, development and production of oil, gas or other minerals which are held by production are presumed to contain, in addition to any express covenants, an implied covenant to reasonably explore and to develop the minerals which are the subject of the lease, and that covenant is a burden on the lessee and any successor in interest. In an action for breach of an implied or express covenant of reasonable exploration or development of land covered by a lease held by production, a presumption of breach arises if the party seeking relief produces competent evidence that at the time the action is commenced there is no mineral production from the subsurface part or parts of the land in question, and that initial production on the lease commenced at least fifteen years before the action. If the court finds the lessee has failed to comply it may allow a reasonable time to comply, or it may issue an order terminating the lessee's right to those subsurface parts, and may enter such other orders as the interests of the parties and equity require.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at sections 55-223, 55-224 and 55-226. This has no counterpart anywhere on this record and it addresses a complaint a great many mineral owners have without knowing there is a name for it: a lease held alive by a shallow well while the deep rights sit undeveloped for decades. Kansas legislated the implied covenant rather than leaving it to case law, put the burden on the lessee, and then shifted the burden of proof by statute: fifteen years since first production plus no production from the subsurface part in question, and the lessee is presumed to have breached. The remedy is the one that matters, which is that the court may terminate the lessee's right to those subsurface parts rather than merely award damages. Two limits are in the text. It applies to leases HELD BY PRODUCTION, so a lease inside its primary term is outside it. And the presumption is about a subsurface part or parts, so the analysis is horizon by horizon rather than lease-wide. WHAT IS NOT READ: sections 55-225, 55-227, 55-228 and 55-229, which govern how the presumption is overcome, when an action is not permissible, the prohibition on waiver, and the saving of other rights. Those decide most real cases and are named in the gaps.

K.S.A. § 55-1601

For the purposes of the lapse and reversion act, a mineral interest means an interest created by an instrument transferring, by grant, assignment, reservation or otherwise, an interest of any kind in coal, oil, gas or other minerals.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at section 55-1601. Short, and it does two things worth separating. It fixes the reach of the lapse act by substance, and it reaches coal and other minerals rather than oil and gas alone, which is the opposite of Michigan and the same breadth as Ohio's act outside its coal exception. And it fixes the reach by mode of creation, catching a reservation as readily as a grant, so the common pattern of a seller reserving the minerals is squarely inside. The revisor prints a case annotation under this section citing Scully v. Overall, 17 Kan. App. 2d 582, 840 P.2d 1211 (1992), for the proposition that a mineral interest lapses and reverts if unused for twenty years with no claim filed under section 55-1604. THAT OPINION HAS NOT BEEN FETCHED and nothing here rests on it; it is recorded because the revisor prints it and because it is the obvious next read. WHAT IS NOT READ: what a grant or reservation of minerals reaches in a Kansas deed, which is a question of construction this act does not touch.

K.S.A. § 58-2223

No instrument in writing of the kind the chapter provides for is valid, except between the parties to it and those who have actual notice of it, until it is deposited with the register of deeds for record. Every such instrument, certified and recorded in the prescribed manner, imparts notice to all persons of its contents from the time of filing with the register of deeds, and all subsequent purchasers and mortgagees are deemed to purchase with notice.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at sections 58-2223 and 58-2222, both of which have stood in these words since the General Statutes of 1868. The pair states the two halves of a pure notice rule about as plainly as any provision on this record: an unrecorded instrument is good against anybody who actually knew about it, and a recorded one is good against everybody. What is absent is the element several other states here add. Nebraska requires the later claimant to be both without notice and first to record, Colorado is race-notice, and Louisiana asks nothing about notice at all. Kansas asks only whether the later claimant actually knew. No Kansas opinion classifying the state has been fetched, so this record applies no label of its own, though the revisor prints a substantial list of law review references under section 58-2222 for anyone who wants to go further. WHAT IS NOT READ: the marketable record title act Kansas has, which the revisor's references under 58-2222 name, and the indexing provisions.

K.S.A. § 55-151

Before drilling any well an operator must file an application of intent to drill with the Kansas Corporation Commission, including the name and address of the surface owner, and including non-binding preliminary estimates of the location of roads of ingress or egress, any tank battery, and any pipeline or electrical line. On receiving the application the commission must send a copy of it to the named surface owner, together with contact information for a designated representative of the applicant including name, address, telephone number and fax or email address. The commission need not send it if the operator verifies that the application has been delivered to the surface owner. No drilling may commence until the commission's authorised agents approve the application, and in approving it the agent must determine that the proposed construction will protect all usable waters and must set the pipe needed to do so and the plugging requirements on abandonment. The Kansas surface owner notice act defines a surface owner as the person holding legal title to the surface as shown on the register of deeds' records who is assessed real estate property taxes, and excludes a tenant and anyone whose only right to use the surface rests on an easement, right of way, licence, mortgage lien, severed mineral interest or other non-possessory interest.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at sections 55-151 and 55-169a, the second being part of the Kansas surface owner notice act of 2009. The design is what distinguishes it. In Colorado, New Mexico, North Dakota, Kentucky and Virginia the operator owes the surface owner the notice; in Kansas the operator owes the information to the regulator and the REGULATOR delivers it, unless the operator proves it delivered the application itself. That removes the failure mode where a notice never arrives and the owner has to prove it. Note two things the section is candid about. The location estimates are described in the statute itself as non-binding and preliminary, so what arrives is an indication rather than a commitment. And what the statute gives the surface owner is information: nothing read here gives them a right to object, a right to be paid for surface damage, or an accommodation standard. WHAT IS NOT READ: sections 55-155 and 55-173, which the notice act's definitions also serve and which govern notice before plugging and abandonment, and whether Kansas has any surface damage provision elsewhere.

K.S.A. § 79-4217

Kansas imposes an excise tax on the severance and production of coal, oil or gas from the earth or water in the state for sale, transport, storage, profit or commercial use. The tax is borne ratably by all persons within the statutory term producer, in proportion to their respective beneficial interest in the coal, oil or gas severed, and is applied equally to all portions of the gross value of each barrel of oil and of the gas severed. The rate is eight percent of the gross value of all oil or gas, and one dollar per ton of coal. The exemptions are extensive and mostly aimed at marginal production: gas injected for lifting, recycling or repressuring, used as fuel on the lease, lawfully vented or flared, or from a well whose average daily production has a gross value of not more than eighty-seven dollars a day; oil from a lease averaging five barrels a day or less per producing well, or six or less where the wells are two thousand feet deep or more, with the threshold rising as the price of oil falls; oil from a tertiary recovery process; new production for twenty-four months in defined circumstances; production from a three-year inactive well for ten years; and incremental production from a qualifying production enhancement project for seven years, that last one switching off for a year after any year in which the weighted average Kansas wellhead price exceeded twenty dollars a barrel for oil or two dollars fifty a thousand cubic feet for gas.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at section 79-4217. The quoted sentence is the answer to the question a royalty owner actually asks and Kansas gives it in the imposing section rather than leaving it to a withholding provision: the tax is borne ratably by everybody in proportion to their beneficial interest. That puts Kansas with Nebraska, North Dakota, Montana and Louisiana, and against Kentucky, whose coal and gas taxes exclude an arm's length royalty from the definition of the taxpayer. On the rate, eight percent of gross value is the highest single rate on this record for oil and gas, but the exemptions matter more than the headline in a state whose production is largely marginal, and several of them are keyed to the price of oil so they widen as prices fall. WHAT IS NOT READ: the definition of producer at section 79-4216, which the imposing section depends on, and section 79-4218 on who remits. Both are named in the gaps because the second decides whose cheque the deduction appears on.