Michigan mineral rights

MCL 554.291(2)

A Michigan oil or gas interest owned by someone other than the surface owner, which has not been sold, leased, mortgaged or transferred by a recorded instrument for twenty years, and for which no drilling permit was issued and no production, withdrawal or underground gas storage use occurred, is deemed abandoned unless a claim of interest is recorded. It then vests in the surface owner as of the date of abandonment.

Checked July 30, 2026. Read on the Michigan Legislature's own site, which states the Compiled Laws are complete through Public Act 20 of 2026. This is the harshest dormancy mechanism on this record and the difference is procedural rather than substantive: Ohio's surface owner must serve notice by certified mail and the holder gets sixty days; North Dakota's must publish for three weeks and the holder gets sixty days; Michigan's statute contains no notice requirement and no procedure for the surface owner at all, and the vesting is dated to the abandonment rather than to any filing. Subsection (1) sets the twenty year clock and lists what stops it: a sale, lease, mortgage or transfer recorded with the register of deeds, a drilling permit issued by the state, actual production or withdrawal from the land or from lands the interest is leased into or pooled or unitized with, or use of the interest in underground gas storage. The section carries an editorial note that the act was held not unconstitutional as applied in Van Slooten v Larsen, 410 Mich 21; 299 NW2d 704 (1980); that opinion was not fetched and nothing is stated here about what it decided beyond the existence of the note.

MCL 554.292(1)

A Michigan oil or gas interest is preserved by recording a written notice with the register of deeds, verified by oath, describing the land and the nature of the interest, naming and addressing the claimant, and stating that they wish to preserve it and do not intend to abandon it. Recording preserves the interest for twenty years from that date.

Checked July 30, 2026. Read at the preservation section of the same act. Subsection (3) is the part that makes this a renewable defence rather than a one-off: recording preserves the interest for twenty years, and at the end of that period it is deemed abandoned again unless the interest has in the meantime shown its nondormant character by a recorded sale, lease, mortgage or transfer, a drilling permit, production, or underground gas storage use. Subsection (2) lets a holder of interests used in underground gas storage preserve a whole field or pool by a single notice defining its boundaries and formations, without describing each separate interest. Given that Michigan gives no notice before an interest vests, recording this claim is the only step within a mineral owner's own control.

MCL 554.291(3)

Where a judgment of foreclosure is entered for delinquent property taxes, a Michigan oil or gas interest owned by someone other than the surface owner is not preserved from that foreclosure unless the interest was sold, leased, mortgaged, transferred, reserved or made subject to a claim of interest, and an instrument evidencing it recorded, during the twenty years immediately before the foreclosure petition was filed.

Checked July 30, 2026. Read at subsection (3) of the same section, added by 2006 PA 519. It is recorded as its own rule because it is a second and independent route by which a Michigan oil or gas interest can be lost, running off the same twenty year record test but triggered by somebody else's unpaid property taxes rather than by the surface owner doing anything. The general property tax act sections it refers to were not read, so this page does not describe how a tax foreclosure proceeds or what notice it carries.

MCL 554.291(1)

Michigan's termination act applies to an interest in oil or gas in land owned by a person other than the owner of the surface. It is framed by the substance, oil or gas rather than minerals generally, and by the split, so an interest held by the surface owner is outside it.

Checked July 30, 2026. Read at the opening of the abandonment section, and recorded because the scope is the sharpest contrast with the other lapse states on this record. Ohio's equivalent act defines mineral broadly enough to reach sand, gravel, clay, shale, limestone and ore as well as oil and gas, and exempts coal. North Dakota's reaches any interest in oil, gas, coal, clay, gravel, uranium and all other minerals of any kind. Michigan's is titled Termination of Oil or Gas Interests in Land and its operative words are oil or gas throughout, so on the reading done here it does not reach a severed interest in other minerals. What was not read is whether some separate Michigan statute does, and that gap is named on this page rather than resolved by inference.

MCL 565.29

A Michigan conveyance of real estate that is not recorded is void as against a later purchaser in good faith and for valuable consideration whose own conveyance is first duly recorded. That the first recorded conveyance is a quitclaim deed does not by itself affect that purchaser's good faith or put them on notice of an unrecorded conveyance.

Checked July 30, 2026. Read in the Revised Statutes of 1846 chapter on alienation by deed and the recording of conveyances, as amended in 1915. Worth noting for anyone comparing states: this is close to word for word what North Dakota's recording section says, including the quitclaim sentence, which is a reminder that several of these statutes descend from the same nineteenth century model rather than being independently invented. Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma, Ohio and New Mexico each word the same rule differently again. No Michigan opinion classifying the state as notice or race-notice has been fetched, so no label is applied here.

MCL 324.61506(n)

Michigan's supervisor of wells is empowered to require reports and maps showing the location of every well, the keeping and filing of logs, well samples and drilling, testing and operating records, and to require identification of the ownership of oil and gas producing leases, properties and wells.

Checked July 30, 2026. Read at the supervisor of wells powers section of the Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Act. Recorded under records because that is what it produces: the two powers together are why Michigan holds a body of well logs, samples, operating records and lease ownership information at all. The same subsection that requires logs and samples provides that well data and samples furnished to the supervisor may be held confidential on the written request of the well owner, so not everything filed is public, and the terms of that confidentiality were not read. Nor was the division's public search interface located during this pass, which is named in this page's gaps.

MCL 324.61506(c)

Michigan's statutory protection for land above an oil or gas operation is exercised by the supervisor of wells, who is empowered to require that wells be located, drilled, cased, operated and plugged in a manner that prevents pollution of, damage to, or destruction of fresh water supplies, including inland lakes and streams and the Great Lakes.

Checked July 30, 2026. Read at the supervisor of wells powers section. This is on the page as Michigan's surface-use answer because on the reading done here it is what Michigan has: a regulator empowered to impose requirements, rather than a statute giving the surface owner a right against the operator. That is a real difference from every other state on this record. Oklahoma gives notice, good faith negotiation, court appraisers and treble damages; North Dakota gives compensation for lost land value with attorney fees shifted; New Mexico gives notice and a mandated draft agreement; Ohio gives restoration deadlines; Colorado gives a statutory accommodation duty; Texas gives the accommodation doctrine. Michigan, so far as this pass established, gives the supervisor powers. The detailed requirements are in administrative rules that were not read, and no Michigan surface damages statute was found, which is stated as what was found rather than as proof that none exists.

MCL 324.61506(p)

The supervisor of wells may require owners, producers and operators to file surety, security or cash bonds in whatever form, condition, term and amount will ensure compliance with the oil and gas part of the Act and with the rules and orders issued under it, and to provide for their release.

Checked July 30, 2026. Read at the same section. Recorded because a bond is the thing actually standing behind a regulator's requirements when an operator does not meet them, and because Michigan's is framed differently from the two other bonding regimes on this record: Colorado sets per-well financial assurance figures in its rules and Oklahoma sets a single statewide sum in its statute, while Michigan leaves form, condition, term and amount to the supervisor. What a surface owner can actually claim against such a bond, if anything, was not read and is not stated here.