Louisiana mineral rights

La. Rev. Stat. § 31:6

Ownership of land in Louisiana does not include ownership of oil, gas and other minerals occurring naturally in liquid or gaseous form, or of any elements or compounds in solution, emulsion or association with them. What the landowner has is the exclusive right to explore and develop the property for the production of such minerals and to reduce them to possession and ownership. Solid minerals are treated differently and are owned as part of the land.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at article 6 of the Louisiana Mineral Code. This is the sentence that puts Louisiana outside the system every other state on this record belongs to, and everything else on this page follows from it. Texas recognises the ownership of oil and gas in place as a property right and treats an oil and gas lease as conveying a determinable fee in the minerals. Colorado treats a severing conveyance as creating a separate and distinct estate. Louisiana has neither, because there is nothing in place to own: until the oil or gas is reduced to possession it belongs to nobody, and what can be owned and conveyed is a RIGHT to go and get it. That is why a Louisiana instrument does not sever a mineral estate, and why nothing on this page uses the phrase. WHAT IS NOT READ: article 5 on the ownership of solid minerals, and how the distinction is applied to substances that are arguably neither.

La. Rev. Stat. § 31:16

The basic mineral rights a Louisiana landowner may create are the mineral servitude, the mineral royalty and the mineral lease, and that enumeration does not exclude the creation of others. Mineral rights are real rights, and they are subject either to the prescription of nonuse for ten years or to special rules of law governing the term of their existence. A mineral servitude is the right of enjoyment of land belonging to another for the purpose of exploring for and producing minerals and reducing them to possession and ownership.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at articles 16 and 21 of the Mineral Code. The quoted sentence is the whole difference between Louisiana and every other state here, stated in one line by the legislature. Everywhere else on this record a severed mineral interest is perpetual by default, and the question the dormancy page asks is whether some statute can take it away. In Louisiana the default runs the other way: the right is temporary by its nature, and the question is whether the owner has done enough to keep it alive. Note the vocabulary, because using the wrong word here produces a wrong answer: a mineral servitude burdens the land of another and carries the right to explore and produce; a mineral royalty is a right to share in production without the right to conduct operations; a mineral lease is a contract right. All three prescribe. WHAT IS NOT READ: the special rules governing the term of a mineral lease, which is the third of the three and the one most readers will actually hold.

La. Rev. Stat. § 31:27

A mineral servitude is extinguished by prescription resulting from nonuse for ten years, and also by confusion, by renunciation or express remission, by expiration of the term or the happening of a dissolving condition, and by extinction of the right of the person who established it. Prescription of nonuse commences from the date the servitude is created. It is interrupted by good faith operations for the discovery and production of minerals, meaning operations commenced with a reasonable expectation of discovering and producing minerals in paying quantities at a particular point or depth, continued at the site chosen to that point or depth, and conducted so as to constitute a single operation even though drilling or mining is not going on at all times. It is also interrupted by production of any mineral covered by the act creating the servitude, and where production is the interruption, prescription commences anew from the date actual production ceases.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at articles 27, 28, 29 and 36 of the Mineral Code. Set this against the five states on this record with a dormant mineral act and the differences are not of degree. The period is TEN years, half of the twenty that Ohio, North Dakota, Michigan and Indiana use and less than half of Nebraska's twenty-three. It runs from the date the right is CREATED rather than from the last thing that happened. Nobody has to give notice, record an affidavit, publish, or sue: the right simply ceases to exist by operation of law. And there is no equivalent of the recorded claim of interest that saves an interest in Ohio, North Dakota, Michigan, Indiana and Nebraska, because what interrupts prescription is real activity in the ground, not a filing. The nearest thing to a filing is acknowledgment by the landowner, which is dealt with in articles this record has not read. WHAT IS NOT READ: articles 30 through 59 on unit operations, shut-in wells, attempts to restore production, acknowledgment and the suspension of prescription by obstacle, which are the machinery around all of this and are substantial. Where the servitude ends the land is simply no longer burdened; there is no interest that moves to anybody, because there was no separate estate.

La. Rev. Stat. § 31:85

A mineral royalty is extinguished by prescription resulting from nonuse for ten years, by confusion with the title out of which it was created, by renunciation or express remission, by expiration of its term or the happening of a dissolving condition, and by extinction of the right of the person who established it. There is an exception in the last of those: the extinction of a mineral servitude by inheritance, or by any act of the servitude owner, does not extinguish a royalty burdening that servitude unless the royalty owner is a party to the act or otherwise consents expressly and in writing to be bound by it.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at article 85 of the Mineral Code. Worth a rule of its own because it is the position most readers of this site are actually in, and because it is the harshest arithmetic on this record. A mineral royalty carries no right to conduct operations, so a royalty owner cannot do the thing that interrupts prescription. Ten years of nobody drilling and the royalty is gone, and nothing the royalty owner can do about it appears in this article. The protection in paragraph (5) is narrow and specific: it stops the servitude owner destroying the royalty by giving up the servitude or by dying, unless the royalty owner agreed. WHAT IS NOT READ: articles 86 through 99, which govern when prescription commences on a royalty, what production interrupts it, and the effect of an obstacle, and article 93 on acknowledgment, which is the royalty owner's nearest equivalent to a saving act.

La. Rev. Stat. § 31:22

The owner of a mineral servitude is under no obligation to exercise it. If he does, he is entitled to use only so much of the land as is reasonably necessary to conduct his operations, and he is obligated, insofar as practicable, to restore the surface to its original condition at the earliest reasonable time. Separately, the owner of land burdened by a mineral right and the owner of the mineral right must each exercise their rights with reasonable regard for those of the other, and so must the owners of separate mineral rights in the same land. A reservation of mineral rights in an instrument transferring land must mention surface rights in the exercise of the rights reserved unless the parties expressly provide otherwise, and the Code sets out wording that satisfies that requirement.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at articles 22 and 11 of the Mineral Code. Three sentences do what Texas needed the accommodation doctrine for and what Kentucky puts inside a compensation section: the reasonable-necessity limit and a restoration duty are stated as an ordinary incident of the right, in the code, in plain terms. Article 11 then adds something no other state on this record has. It is a drafting rule: a reservation of minerals in a deed of the land MUST mention surface rights unless the parties expressly provide otherwise, and the legislature supplies the paragraph that satisfies it, which the article sets out verbatim. That is a statute telling conveyancers what to write, and it exists because the surface consequences of a reservation are exactly what old instruments left out. Subsection B was amended in 2006 and again in 2023. WHAT IS NOT READ: whether a failure to include the required mention has any consequence for the reservation, and any Louisiana decision on the restoration obligation, which is heavily litigated.

La. Civ. Code art. 3338

The rights and obligations established or created by certain written instruments are without effect as to a third person unless the instrument is registered by recording it in the appropriate mortgage or conveyance records. Those instruments are an instrument that transfers an immovable or establishes a real right in or over an immovable; the lease of an immovable; an option, right of first refusal, or contract to buy, sell or lease an immovable or to establish a real right in or over one; and an instrument that modifies, terminates or transfers the rights created or evidenced by any of them. Recordation does not create a presumption that the instrument is valid or genuine, or as to the capacity or status of the parties, has no effect unless the law expressly provides for its recordation, and is effective only for immovables located in the parish where it is recorded. A party to a recorded instrument may not contradict its terms or its statements of fact to the prejudice of a third person who acquires an interest after it is recorded.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at articles 3338, 3341 and 3342 of the Civil Code, in the Title headed Of Registry. This is the plainest recording rule on the record and the one that differs most from the others. Colorado is race-notice, Texas is notice, Nebraska requires the later claimant to be without notice and to have recorded first, Kentucky turns on acknowledgment. Every one of those makes what somebody knew part of the question. Louisiana does not: the instrument is simply without effect as to a third person until it is recorded, and the article says nothing about notice or good faith. A mineral servitude is a real right in an immovable, so it is squarely inside the list. Note the parish limit in article 3341, which matters for a servitude under land straddling a parish line, and note that article 3343, which defined a third person, was repealed by Acts 2025, No. 488, so this record does not state the definition. WHAT IS NOT READ: where that definition now lives, and the remaining articles of the Title, including the effect of recordation on prescription.

La. Rev. Stat. § 47:636

Every person actually engaged in severing oil, gas or other natural resources, or actually operating the property, under contracts requiring payment direct to the owners of any royalty interest, excess royalty or working interest, in money or in kind, must deduct the amount of the severance tax from any amount or anything due before making payment. The severance tax is in addition to state, parochial, municipal, district and special taxes on real estate and other corporeal property, but no further or additional tax or license may be levied or imposed upon oil or gas leases or rights, no additional value may be added to the assessment of land by reason of the presence of oil or gas in it or their production from it, and no severance tax or license may be levied or imposed by any parish or other local subdivision of the state.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at articles 636 and 643 of Title 47, with the rates at article 633. Two propositions here, and both are about who is allowed to reach a mineral owner. On the royalty question Louisiana is with Nebraska, Montana and North Dakota and against Kentucky: the severer SHALL deduct the tax from the royalty owner's payment, in terms. On the local question it is the exact inverse of Virginia, read the same day: Virginia levies nothing at state level and lets its counties and cities tax the severer on gross receipts, while Louisiana levies at state level and forbids any parish or local subdivision from levying a severance tax or license at all. Article 643 goes further than that and bars any further tax or license on oil or gas leases or RIGHTS, and bars adding value to the land assessment because there is oil or gas under it, which on this record is the strongest statutory protection a mineral owner has against local taxation. WHAT IS NOT READ: whether the deduction in article 636 can be varied by the lease, and articles 637 to 640 on when the purchaser rather than the severer withholds.