Maryland mineral rights

Md. Code, Environment s. 15-1203, Action to terminate dormant mineral interest

On or after 1 October 2011 a surface owner of real property subject to a mineral interest may maintain an action to terminate a dormant mineral interest. An interest is dormant if it is unused for twenty or more years preceding the commencement of termination AND no notice of the mineral interest was recorded during that same period. The action is in the nature of, and requires the same notice as, an action to quiet title under section 14-108 of the Real Property Article, and it may be maintained whether or not the owner is unknown or missing. It is brought in the circuit court for the jurisdiction where the property is. A court order terminating the interest merges it, including express and implied appurtenant surface rights and obligations, with the surface estate in shares proportionate to the ownership of the surface estate, subject to existing liens for taxes or assessments. The order must identify the mineral interest, each surface estate it merges into with tax map and parcel number, the name of each surface owner, the name of each prior mineral owner if known, and anything else the court thinks describes the effect, and the clerk records it in the land records. The section applies notwithstanding anything to the contrary in the instrument that created the interest or in any other recorded document, unless that document provides an earlier termination date.

Checked August 3, 2026. Read at Md. Code, Environment ss. 15-1201 to 15-1203 on 2026-08-03. THE CITATION IS THE FIRST FINDING. The probe that put Maryland on this list guessed Real Property ss. 15-1201 and 15-1202 and got nothing back, and recorded that the host answers but the citation was not located. It is in the ENVIRONMENT article, title 15, subtitle 12, and the same section numbers exist there. Maryland is also the state here that took the UNIFORM act rather than writing its own, and section 15-1202(b) says so in terms: the purpose of this subtitle is to make uniform the law governing dormant mineral interests among the states. Scope is set by 15-1202(a): the subtitle applies to all mineral interests except those held by the United States or a Native American tribe, and those held by the State or its agencies or political subdivisions, in each case except so far as federal or State law permits. It does not limit any other procedure for clearing an abandoned mineral interest, and it does not affect water rights. The definitions at 15-1201 are worth reading before relying on any of it: MINERAL INTEREST reaches a fee simple or any lesser interest and any kind of royalty, production payment, executive right, non-executive right, leasehold or lien in minerals, and SURFACE OWNER expressly excludes the owner of a right of way, easement or leasehold, so a tenant cannot bring the action. WHAT IS NOT READ: section 14-108 of the Real Property Article, which supplies the notice the action requires, and any Maryland decision under the subtitle.

Md. Code, Environment s. 15-1203, Action to terminate dormant mineral interest

Four things constitute use of a Maryland mineral interest, and each of the first three counts as use of the entire interest owned by that owner rather than only of the mineral it touched. Active mineral operations on or below the surface of the property, or of other property utilised or pooled with it, including production, geophysical exploration, exploratory or developmental drilling, mining, exploitation and development. Recordation of an instrument that creates, reserves or otherwise evidences a claim to, or the continued existence of, the interest, including one that transfers, leases or divides it. A judgment or decree making specific reference to a mineral that is part of the interest, recorded by or under the owner's authority, which counts as use of the interest the judgment specifies. And payment of a tax on a separate assessment of the interest, or a transfer tax, or a severance tax, which counts as use of the entire taxed interest and of any other untaxed interest in which the owner holds all or part. Then the exclusion, which is a single sentence and is pointed: the injection of substances for the purpose of disposal or storage does not constitute use of a mineral interest.

Checked August 3, 2026. Read at Md. Code, Environment s. 15-1203(c) on 2026-08-03. The exclusion is the opposite of Nebraska, which is on this record as a state where using the PORE SPACE is one of the listed things that saves an interest from its dormant mineral act. Maryland says injecting for disposal or storage is not use at all. Two states, the same physical activity, opposite consequences for the owner who does it, and the difference matters more each year as disposal and carbon storage become the live use of depleted formations. Note also how wide the rest of the list is by comparison with Oregon, read the day before, whose extinguishment statute lists two record events and no uses at all: Maryland counts production, exploration, drilling, mining, a recorded instrument of any kind, a recorded judgment, and three different taxes. And note that operations on OTHER property pooled or utilised with yours count, so a unit well saves every interest in the unit. THE TAX LIMB IS BROKEN AS DRAFTED and the page says so: all three taxes are said to be in accordance with s. 8-229 of the Tax Property Article, and s. 8-229 was read in full and is one sentence permitting a separate assessment of severed minerals. It contains no transfer tax and no severance tax. WHAT IS NOT READ: whether any Maryland county in fact separately assesses severed minerals, which is what would make the tax limb usable at all.

Md. Code, Environment s. 15-1205, Late notice of intent to preserve

An owner of a mineral interest may record a notice of intent to preserve the interest, or part of it, at any time, and the interest is preserved in the county where the notice is recorded. It may be recorded by an owner, by another person legally authorised to act for the owner, or by a co-owner for the benefit of any or all co-owners. The notice must contain the name of the owner or co-owners, or, if the identity of the owner cannot be determined, a statement that it cannot; and an identification of the interest, which may be by reference to the location in the records of the instrument that created or evidenced it, by the judgment or decree confirming it, by a legal description accompanied by the name of the record owner under whom the owner claims, or by a general reference to any or all mineral interests of the owner in any real property in the county where a previously recorded instrument or a judgment established the interest. Then the rescue. In an action to terminate a mineral interest the court SHALL permit the owner to record a late notice of intent to preserve as a condition of dismissal of the action, if the owner pays the litigation expenses incurred by the surface owner, which are defined as the costs and expenses the court determines were reasonably and necessarily incurred in preparing and prosecuting the action, including reasonable attorney fees. And the rescue has a cliff: it does not apply where the interest has been unused for forty years or more before the action was commenced.

Checked August 3, 2026. Read at Md. Code, Environment ss. 15-1204 and 15-1205 on 2026-08-03. California is the other state on this record with this rescue and the comparison is exact on the first half and different on the second. There too the court must let a mineral owner file a late notice as a condition of dismissing the surface owner's suit, on payment of the surface owner's costs. What California has no equivalent of, on what has been read there, is Maryland's FORTY YEAR CLIFF: at forty years of non use the late notice is gone and the action proceeds. So Maryland's act has two clocks rather than one, and a mineral owner who has let twenty years pass is in a different position from one who has let forty pass, even though both are equally dormant under 15-1203. The general reference option in 15-1204(c)(4) is the practical one and is easy to miss: an owner may preserve any or all of their mineral interests in an entire county with a single general reference, provided a previously recorded instrument or a judgment established them, so the filing does not require assembling a legal description for each parcel. WHAT IS NOT READ: what a Maryland court has held reasonable and necessary as litigation expenses, and whether any late notice has been permitted.

Md. Code, Environment s. 15-1206, Trust for unknown or missing owner

Where title to a severed mineral interest is vested in an unknown or missing owner, the circuit court of the county where the interest is located may, on petition and after notice and a hearing, place the interest in trust, appoint a trustee for the unknown or missing owner, order the trustee to create a separate trust bank account, authorise the trustee to sell, execute and deliver a valid lease on the minerals TO THE OWNER OF THE SURFACE ESTATE, and place conditions on that authorisation. The petition may be filed by a person vested in fee simple with the whole or an undivided interest in the surface estate. If the missing owner does not contest the trust within five years of the order creating it, the trustee MUST petition to terminate the trust and convey title to the surface owners, naming as defendants the surface owners and anybody else with a legal interest including unknown owners, and supporting it with an affidavit from the surface owners of fee simple ownership and an affidavit from the trustee that after diligent inquiry, including a search of the county land records, the register of wills records and the circuit court records performed in accordance with generally accepted standards of title examination, the trustee cannot locate the owner. If the owner does not appear and the court finds the petitioners are the fee simple surface owners, the court orders the conveyance. The trustee conveys by recordable instrument, pays taxes, costs, expenses and fees out of the trust account, pays any balance to the surface owners, closes the account and files a final report, after which the surface owners are entitled to all proceeds from the lease.

Checked August 3, 2026. Read at Md. Code, Environment s. 15-1206 on 2026-08-03. This is a SECOND and entirely separate route by which a Maryland mineral interest changes hands, and it runs on being unfindable rather than on being unused. Montana and Pennsylvania are on this record as states where a court appoints somebody to lease for an owner it cannot find, and in both the interest itself is untouchable: the trust supplies a missing owner with somebody to act FOR them and stops there. Kentucky and Illinois are the states where a trust ends in a conveyance to the surface owner, Kentucky after seven years of COMMERCIAL PRODUCTION and Illinois after seven years regardless. Maryland's is five years and the trigger is simply that nobody contested, which is the shortest and the least demanding of the four. Note who the lease goes to: the statute authorises the trustee to lease the minerals to the SURFACE OWNER, not to an operator at arm's length, so the person petitioning for the trust is also the person who gets the lease and, five years later, the interest. The trustee's affidavit is the one real protection and it is a substantial one, requiring a title standard search of three separate county record sets. WHAT IS NOT READ: the Maryland Rules, which subsection (h) says govern notice to interested persons, the form of petitions and the conduct of the hearing, and any case under this section.

Md. Code, Tax-Property s. 8-229, Separate assessment of minerals

If minerals and mineral rights are owned separately from the land in which they are located, the supervisor may assess the minerals and mineral rights separately from the land. That is the whole section, and it is permissive rather than mandatory: the supervisor MAY assess, so whether a particular Maryland severed interest carries its own tax bill is an administrative decision rather than a statutory consequence of severance. The section matters beyond the tax it authorises, because Maryland's dormant mineral act makes payment of a tax on a separate assessment one of the four things that constitute use of a mineral interest, and therefore one of the ways an owner defeats a termination action. An owner whose interest has never been separately assessed cannot pay that tax and so cannot rely on that saving event, which makes the supervisor's discretion a decision about the durability of somebody's title as well as about revenue.

Checked August 3, 2026. Read at Md. Code, Tax-Property s. 8-229 on 2026-08-03, in full, and it is one sentence. Two things follow that a reader should have together. First, this is the section Maryland's dormant mineral act at Environment s. 15-1203(c)(2) points to for THREE different taxes: a tax on a separate assessment, a transfer tax relating to a mineral, and a severance tax relating to a mineral, each said to be in accordance with s. 8-229. Only the first of the three is in s. 8-229. There is no transfer tax in it and no severance tax in it. So two of the three tax saving events in Maryland's dormant mineral act cite a statute that does not contain them, and this record does not know whether those taxes exist elsewhere in Maryland law or whether the cross reference is simply wrong. Second, only Colorado, Alabama and Minnesota have been read on this record for the property tax treatment of a severed mineral interest as distinct from production, and Maryland is a fourth answer: not an automatic separate assessment as in Minnesota, not a permanent exemption bought once at the courthouse as in Alabama, but a discretion. WHAT IS NOT READ: the Tax General Article, the rest of the Tax Property Article, whether any Maryland county exercises the discretion, and what happens to a separately assessed mineral interest that falls into tax arrears.

Md. Code, Environment s. 14-111, Duties of permit holder

Every holder of a permit to drill for gas or oil must submit a completion report within thirty days of finishing the well, submit cutting samples on request, notify the Department before a well is abandoned, and comply with the sealing, plugging and reclamation requirements. On money, three separate obligations run together. Financial assurance of at least fifty thousand dollars for each gas or oil well, including each well on a multiwell pad, and never less than the most recent closure cost estimate the permit holder gave with the application. Comprehensive general liability insurance of at least three hundred thousand dollars for each person and five hundred thousand dollars for each occurrence, to pay damages for injury to persons or property caused by sudden accidental occurrences arising from the permitted activities, including the costs of investigating, defending or settling claims. And environmental pollution liability insurance of at least one million dollars per loss for bodily injury, property damage and NATURAL RESOURCE DAMAGE, including cleanup and remediation, for sudden or non sudden releases of pollutants, which must be maintained for five years after the Department determines the well has been properly sealed and plugged and the site reclaimed. The financial assurance must extend to the owner or owners of the surface AND SUBSURFACE property, and must cover the acts and omissions of the permit holder's contractors and subcontractors.

Checked August 3, 2026. Read at Md. Code, Environment s. 14-111 on 2026-08-03. The quoted subsection is the reason this belongs on a page for mineral owners rather than only for neighbours: the financial assurance runs to the SUBSURFACE owner as well as the surface owner, so a Maryland mineral owner whose lessee walks away from a hole has a claim on the security rather than only a claim against a company. Idaho's surface use bond, read the same day, is six thousand dollars per well site and runs to the surface landowner only. Maryland's is fifty thousand dollars per well and runs to both estates, and the pollution insurance survives five years past plugging. Note the exemption at subsection (d): a well in existence on or before 1 October 2013 keeps the bond and insurance required by its most recent permit, unless it is later recompleted, stimulated, deepened or given lateral extensions, at which point the modern figures apply. The word STIMULATED in that list is doing nothing since 2017, because stimulating a Maryland oil or gas well by hydraulic fracturing is now prohibited outright. WHAT IS NOT READ: the Department's regulations, and how a subsurface owner actually claims against the assurance.

Md. Code, Environment s. 14-107.1, Hydraulic fracturing prohibited

A person may not engage in the hydraulic fracturing of a well for the exploration or production of oil or natural gas in the State. The section defines hydraulic fracturing for itself as a stimulation treatment performed on oil and natural gas wells in low permeability oil or natural gas reservoirs through which specially engineered fluids are pumped at high pressure and rate into the reservoir interval to be treated, causing fractures to open. There is no permit exception and no moratorium language: the prohibition is flat. A separate section forbids drilling for oil or gas in the waters of the Chesapeake Bay, any of its tributaries, or in the Chesapeake Bay Critical Area, notwithstanding any other law. And the general permit provisions require the Department to DENY a permit where the proposed drilling or well operation poses a substantial threat to public safety or a risk of significant adverse environmental impact to, among other things, the Chesapeake Bay, its Critical Area, tidal or nontidal wetlands, endangered or threatened species or their habitat, historic properties, populated areas, freshwater estuarine or marine fisheries, or other significant natural resources.

Checked August 3, 2026. Read at Md. Code, Environment ss. 14-107.1, 14-107 and 14-108 on 2026-08-03. Washington is the other state on this record with an outright statutory ban on hydraulic fracturing, and the dates are the whole comparison: Maryland's prohibition dates from 2017 and Washington's from 2019. The drafting differs in one respect worth knowing. Washington's section preserves hydraulic fracturing for other purposes expressly; Maryland's is confined by its own terms to a well FOR THE EXPLORATION OR PRODUCTION OF OIL OR NATURAL GAS, which reaches the same result by definition rather than by proviso. Set this beside what it means for everything else on this page. Maryland has a dormant mineral act that can take an unused oil and gas interest away from you, and a prohibition on the technique by which almost all remaining American shale gas is produced. The two together are the reason the practical question for most Maryland mineral owners is a title question rather than a development question. Note that the ban does not touch coal, which is regulated separately by the Bureau of Mines in Allegany and Garrett counties, nor non coal mining. WHAT IS NOT READ: the 2017 session law and its legislative history, and whether any Maryland well is producing by conventional means.

Md. Code, Environment s. 14-112, Distance from property boundary

A well for the production or underground storage of gas or oil may not be drilled nearer than one thousand feet to the boundary of the property except by agreement with the owners of the gas and oil on adjacent lands, and a coalbed methane well may not be drilled nearer than five hundred feet except by agreement with the owners of coalbed methane on adjacent lands. Where it is impossible to site a well the required distance from the boundary and no agreement has been made, a well may be located nearer with the consent of the Department, but when such a permit is applied for the Department must notify every landowner, royalty owner or leaseholder within the required minimum distance of the proposed well, give them a reasonable opportunity to file objections, and hold a hearing. If it then determines the well must be nearer it may issue the permit, and any landowner, royalty owner or leaseholder within the distance has a right to a rehearing and an appeal to the courts. A request for a rehearing or an appeal stays the authority granted under the permit until the permit is finally determined. The Department prescribes by regulation the distance between any two wells on a property.

Checked August 3, 2026. Read at Md. Code, Environment s. 14-112 on 2026-08-03. This is what Maryland has instead of correlative rights machinery, and it belongs to the neighbouring MINERAL owner rather than to the surface owner. The default rule is a private veto: within a thousand feet of the line, the adjacent oil and gas owners have to agree. What replaces the veto where agreement is impossible is a notice, an objection, a hearing, a rehearing and an appeal, and the stay is the part with teeth, because an appeal suspends the permit rather than merely reviewing it afterwards. Notice runs to every LANDOWNER, ROYALTY OWNER OR LEASEHOLDER within the distance, which is a wider class than the agreement limb reaches and includes people with no power to block the well at all. Set the thousand feet against Idaho, read the same day, where in the absence of a spacing order an oil well sits on a forty acre unit with a three hundred and thirty foot setback and a gas well on six hundred and forty acres with six hundred and sixty feet. Maryland's is the longer distance and does a different job: Idaho's setbacks protect the unit's geometry, Maryland's protects the neighbour's ability to say no. WHAT IS NOT READ: the Department's regulations on well to well spacing, and whether any Maryland permit has been contested this way.

Md. Code, Environment s. 14-113, Royalties under unit operation agreement

Nothing read in Maryland's oil and gas law lets anybody be forced into a unit. There is no compulsory pooling, no integration order, no spacing unit, no correlative rights standard and no risk penalty, because there is no machinery of that kind at all: units in Maryland are formed by agreement or not formed. What the statute does regulate is what happens after a voluntary unit produces. On completion of a well producing gas or oil on any leased lands included under a unit operation agreement, royalties from the producing well must be paid on ALL lands originally included within the unit operation agreement. And within six months after the completion of the producing well, the lands within the agreement that are not included as in pool acreage, and on which no royalties are payable, must be released, unless the owner of those lands has otherwise agreed in writing. The section does not reach leases and unit operation agreements that were in effect on 1 June 1956. Separately, the Department is forbidden to prorate or limit the output of any gas or oil well, which is the conservation power most oil and gas states give their regulator first.

Checked August 3, 2026. The negative was established on 2026-08-03 by enumeration and not by any search. The instrument is EVERY SECTION of Md. Code, Environment title 14 subtitle 1, the oil and gas subtitle, fetched one section at a time from 14-101 to 14-125 until 14-126 returned not found, and concatenated to 34,722 characters. Counted case insensitively over the whole subtitle: UNITIZ 0, INTEGRAT 0, COMPULSOR 0, SPACING UNIT 0, CORRELATIVE 0, JUST AND EQUITABLE 0 and SURFACE OWNER 0. The controls are what make those zeros mean something: PERMIT returns 56, WELL 56, ROYALT 7, POOL 5 and NOTICE 5, and each of the five POOL hits was inspected and is either the definition of pool as an underground reservoir or the phrase in pool acreage in s. 14-113. The mandatory release in 14-113 is the mirror image of the problem most states solve with pooling: instead of forcing an owner in, Maryland forces acreage out of a voluntary unit when it turns out not to be over the pool, and it does so on a six month clock unless the owner agreed otherwise in writing. Read s. 14-103 with it, because a state that forbids its regulator to prorate or limit output has declined the other half of the conservation toolkit as well. THE LIMIT: this is a whole subtitle enumeration of the subtitle where such a provision would sit, and it cannot exclude a pooling provision somewhere else in Maryland law, though nothing read suggests one.

Md. Code, Real Property s. 3-203, Effect of recording

Every recorded deed or other instrument takes effect from its effective date as against the grantee of any deed executed and delivered after that effective date, unless the grantee of the subsequent deed has accepted delivery in good faith, without constructive notice under section 3-202, and for a good and valuable consideration, and has recorded the deed first. All four conditions are required of the later grantee, and if any of them fails the earlier instrument prevails from its own effective date rather than from the date it reached the record. Maryland states the rule from the earlier instrument's point of view rather than by declaring an unrecorded conveyance void, which is the drafting most states on this record use, and the practical effect is the same but the burden is arranged differently.

Checked August 3, 2026. Read at Md. Code, Real Property s. 3-203 on 2026-08-03. Good faith, no constructive notice, value and first to record: that is four limbs where most race notice statutes on this record state three, and the fourth is a cross reference that carries real weight, so read the companion rule on this page for what s. 3-202 does. This record has been calling the combination race notice in Colorado, Michigan, Montana, North Dakota, Alaska, California, New York, Wyoming, Utah, Minnesota, Hawaii, Oregon and Idaho, as against the notice only shape in Kansas and Texas, and North Carolina's pure race where notice does not come into it at all. No Maryland opinion classifying the state was fetched, so no label is applied here, only the text. The inversion of the drafting is worth noticing for a mineral owner in particular: a Maryland mineral deed takes effect FROM ITS EFFECTIVE DATE, so the question a searcher asks is not when it was recorded but whether the later purchaser can make out all four conditions. WHAT IS NOT READ: any Maryland decision on the section, and the rest of title 3 of the Real Property Article.

Md. Code, Real Property s. 3-202, Possession as constructive notice

If a grantee under an unrecorded deed is in possession of the land and that possession is inconsistent with the record title, the possession constitutes constructive notice of what an inquiry of the possessor would disclose as to the existence of the unrecorded deed. Maryland puts into one sentence of statute what most states leave to case law: the duty of inquiry, its trigger, and the extent of what a purchaser is fixed with. The trigger is possession inconsistent with the record title, so possession that matches the record raises nothing. And the extent is defined by what asking would have revealed rather than by what the unrecorded deed says, so a purchaser is charged with the answer to a question they did not ask.

Checked August 3, 2026. Read at Md. Code, Real Property s. 3-202 on 2026-08-03, and it is the section 3-203 makes one of its four conditions turn on. Set it against Oregon, read the day before, because the two states legislate on the same doctrine and point it in opposite directions. Oregon's ORS 93.710 provides that recording a mineral interest is notice to third persons IRRESPECTIVE OF WHETHER the grantee is in possession, which is a rule written to protect the severed mineral owner, who is never in possession of anything. Maryland's 3-202 goes the other way and makes possession itself a source of notice, which is a rule that protects an unrecorded grantee who is on the ground. Neither helps a severed mineral owner who is neither recorded nor in possession, but the drafting tells you which problem each legislature had in mind. For a Maryland mineral searcher the practical consequence is narrower than it looks: a severed mineral interest almost never involves possession inconsistent with the record title, so 3-202 rarely reaches minerals, and the four condition rule in 3-203 does the work. WHAT IS NOT READ: any Maryland decision on how far the inquiry duty extends.

Md. Code, Courts and Judicial Proceedings s. 5-103, Actions for possession of land

Within twenty years from the date the cause of action accrues, a person must either file an action for recovery of possession of a corporeal freehold or leasehold estate in land, or enter on the land. Two savings follow and both matter for anybody trying to work out what the section reaches. It does not affect the common law doctrine of prescription as it applies to the creation of INCORPOREAL interests in land by adverse use, so easements and profits are governed by the case law rather than by this section. And it does not affect the limitation periods set out in sections 6-103 or 8-107 of the Real Property Article. The section is a limitation on the action rather than a statutory statement of what adverse possession requires: unlike Idaho, which sets out enclosure or cultivation, tax payment and a standard of proof, or Oregon, which requires an honest belief of ownership held on an objective and reasonable basis, Maryland leaves the elements of adverse possession to the common law and legislates only the clock and the alternative of re-entry.

Checked August 3, 2026. Read at Md. Code, Courts and Judicial Proceedings s. 5-103 on 2026-08-03. The distinction the section draws between CORPOREAL and INCORPOREAL interests is the one a mineral owner has to think about, because it is the distinction Maryland's own dormant mineral act refuses to draw: Environment s. 15-1201(c) defines a mineral interest to include an interest whether CORPOREAL OR INCORPOREAL, expressly covering both. So the same interest can be inside 15-1201 for the purposes of being terminated for dormancy and, depending on how it was created, outside 5-103(a) and governed by prescription instead. Nothing read resolves how the two fit together and no Maryland decision was fetched, so this page states both and joins neither. The alternative of ENTRY ON THE LAND is worth a line on its own: the statute is satisfied by entering rather than by suing, which for a surface estate is a cheap act and for a severed mineral estate is close to meaningless, since there is nothing to enter without drilling or mining. WHAT IS NOT READ: sections 6-103 and 8-107 of the Real Property Article, the Maryland case law on adverse possession, and anything on whether possession of the surface can ever ripen into title to severed minerals in this state.