Nebraska mineral rights

Neb. Rev. Stat. § 57-229

A severed Nebraska mineral interest is abandoned unless its record owner has, within the twenty-three years immediately before the action is filed, publicly exercised the right of ownership in one of three ways: by acquiring, selling, leasing, pooling, utilizing, mortgaging, encumbering or transferring the interest or any part of it by an instrument properly recorded in the county where the land lies; by drilling or mining for, removing, producing or withdrawing minerals from under the land, or using the geological formations or the spaces or cavities below the surface for any purpose consistent with the rights the severing instrument conveyed or reserved; or by recording a verified claim of interest describing the land, the nature of the interest, the instrument it is claimed under and the claimant's name and address, and stating that they claim the interest and do not intend to abandon it. Any of those extends the interest for a further twenty-three years from the date of the act. Interests of which the State of Nebraska or any of its political subdivisions is the record owner are excepted.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at section 57-229 on the Nebraska Legislature's own site, which serves each section as its own page. Three features separate this from the other lapse statutes on this record. The period is twenty-three years, where Ohio, North Dakota, Michigan and Indiana all use twenty; nothing read explains the choice. The saving acts are unusually broad on one axis and unusually narrow on another: USING THE PORE SPACE counts, because the second limb reaches using the geological formations or the spaces or cavities below the surface for any purpose consistent with the severing instrument, which no other statute here says; but PAYING THE TAX does not count, and that omission does real work, because Nebraska separately lets a severed mineral interest be entered on the county tax list. An Indiana owner is saved by paying the tax on the interest. A Nebraska owner on the same tax roll is not. And the clock is measured backwards from the filing of the surface owner's action rather than forwards from a fixed date, so an owner who acts before suit is filed is in time. WHAT IS NOT READ: any Nebraska decision applying the section, and what a court makes of an owner who acts after suit is filed but before judgment.

Neb. Rev. Stat. § 57-228

The owner or owners of the surface from which a mineral interest has been severed may sue in equity, in the county where the land or part of it lies, on behalf of themselves and any other surface owners, praying for the termination and extinguishment of the severed mineral interest and its cancellation of record. Everyone having or appearing to have any interest in the severed mineral interest must be named as a defendant, and where they are not known and cannot be ascertained they may be proceeded against as unknown defendants. If the court finds the interest abandoned it enters judgment terminating and extinguishing it, cancelling it of record, and vesting the title in the owners of the surface from which it was severed, in the proportions in which they own the surface.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at sections 57-228 and 57-230, with the grace provision at 57-231. This is a fifth distinct procedure for ending a mineral interest and it is the most demanding one on this record for the person who benefits. Ohio requires the surface owner to serve certified mail and record an affidavit. North Dakota requires newspaper publication for three weeks. Michigan requires nothing at all of the surface owner and dates the vesting to the abandonment. Indiana requires nothing of anybody. Nebraska requires the surface owner to file and win a suit in equity, naming every person with or appearing to have an interest, and nothing happens to the mineral interest until a court says so. That cuts both ways for a mineral owner: no interest is quietly lost, and an owner who is served can appear and prove one of the saving acts. Section 57-231 is worth noting alongside Texaco v. Short on this site's federal record: for two years after October 23, 1967 an owner who simply entered an appearance and asserted the interest was deemed to have timely and publicly exercised ownership, which is the same kind of grace period the Supreme Court leaned on when it upheld Indiana's act. WHAT IS NOT READ: whether Nebraska's act has been challenged, and what the court does where the surface itself is in several hands.

Neb. Rev. Stat. § 57-227

No estate or interest in land or minerals, including a royalty interest, is subject to foreclosure or otherwise affected by virtue of any lien for taxes against any other estate or interest in the same land or minerals owned by another person, firm or corporation.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at section 57-227, which is one sentence long and does more work than its length suggests. It settles that a severed Nebraska mineral or royalty interest survives a tax foreclosure aimed at the surface, and that the surface survives a foreclosure aimed at the minerals. Hold it against Michigan, where a dormant mineral interest is expressly not spared by tax foreclosure, and the contrast is direct. What it does not do is make the mineral interest safe generally: Nebraska's dormant mineral act can still extinguish it, and this section says nothing about a tax lien against the mineral interest itself. WHAT IS NOT READ: how a severed interest is valued for tax once it is on the list, and what happens when the tax on the mineral interest itself goes unpaid.

Neb. Rev. Stat. § 57-236

Any owner of the surface estate from which a mineral interest has been severed, or the owner of the severed mineral interest, may apply to the county assessor of the county where the surface lies to place that severed mineral interest on the county tax list. The applicant pays for it, and must give the assessor proof of ownership and a record of the creation of the severed interest as shown by the records of the county clerk or register of deeds, including the owner or owners' names and last known addresses, the ownership interest and any fractional interest, and the legal description, in the form of an attorney's opinion or a certificate prepared by a licensed abstracter.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at section 57-236. Two things make this worth a rule of its own. It is the only provision on this record that lets the SURFACE owner force somebody else's mineral interest onto the tax roll, at the surface owner's own expense, which is an odd thing to want until it is read next to the dormant mineral act: an interest on the tax roll has a name and a last known address attached to it, which is what a surface owner needs to name defendants in a suit under section 57-228. And the omission the pair creates is the sharp part. Paying tax on the interest is not one of the three acts that saves it from abandonment under section 57-229. So a Nebraska mineral owner can be listed, assessed and paying, and still lose the interest for not having recorded anything or produced anything in twenty-three years. Indiana answers the same question the opposite way and counts paying the tax as a use. WHAT IS NOT READ: sections 57-237 and 57-238 on the separate listing and the appeal from it, and how the interest is valued.

Neb. Rev. Stat. § 76-238

All deeds, mortgages and other instruments that are required to be or may be recorded take effect and are in force from and after the time of delivering them to the register of deeds for recording, and not before, as to all creditors and subsequent purchasers in good faith without notice. All such instruments are void as to creditors and subsequent purchasers without notice whose own instruments are recorded before them, though they remain valid between the parties. A deed is recorded in the order and as of the time it is delivered for that purpose, and is considered recorded from the time of delivery, in the county where the real estate or any part of it lies.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at section 76-238, with the timing rule at 76-237 and the place of recording at 76-245. The formulation combines both elements: a later claimant must be without notice AND must have recorded first. Nebraska has also legislated one qualification on possession as notice that no other state here has, and it is agricultural in origin: possession of agricultural or residential real estate by somebody related to the record owner within the third degree of consanguinity or affinity does not serve as notice to a creditor or subsequent purchaser where that person claims under a lease entered into on or after July 16, 2004 that purports to run beyond a year and was not recorded, unless the buyer got a written copy of the lease first. In a state where family members farm each other's ground that is a real trap closed. No Nebraska opinion classifying the state as a notice or race-notice jurisdiction has been fetched, so this record applies no label.

Neb. Rev. Stat. § 57-205

When a recorded oil, gas or other mineral lease on Nebraska land becomes forfeited, the lessee or their successors must, within thirty days of the forfeiture, have the lease surrendered in writing, signed, acknowledged and placed on record in the county where the land lies, without cost to the owner. If they do not, the landowner may serve a notice in a form the statute sets out, in person, by registered or certified letter to the last known address, or by publication for one week in a newspaper of general circulation in the county, declaring the lease forfeited and demanding a recorded surrender within ten days, and warning that an affidavit of forfeiture will otherwise be filed with the register of deeds. If the lease owner still refuses, the owner of the leased premises may sue for the surrender and recover one hundred dollars in damages, all costs, a reasonable attorney's fee for preparing and prosecuting the suit, and any additional damages the evidence warrants.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at sections 57-201, 57-202 and 57-205. This is the answer to a problem a mineral owner meets long before any question about dormancy: an expired lease still sitting on the record, making the interest hard to lease again. Nebraska gives a form of notice, a ten day deadline, a filed affidavit of forfeiture, and then a suit with fee shifting and a fixed sum of damages. Note who it protects. The sections speak of the owner of the land and the owner of the leased premises, which in a severed estate is the mineral owner as lessor, and this record has not read anything deciding how they apply where the surface and the minerals are in different hands. The lessee's counter is also in the chapter: section 57-204 lets a lessee notify the register of deeds that the lease has not been forfeited, and what that does to the landowner's affidavit has not been read here.

Neb. Rev. Stat. § 57-905

The Nebraska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission may require a reasonable bond with good and sufficient surety conditioned on compliance with Nebraska law and the commission's rules, regulations and orders, and must periodically evaluate the financial assurance requirements on existing and proposed wells to ensure the ability to pay the costs of plugging, abandonment and surface restoration. It may also require wells to be drilled, cased, operated and plugged so as to prevent oil or gas escaping from one stratum to another, the intrusion of water into oil or gas strata, the pollution of fresh water supplies by oil, gas or salt water, and to prevent blowouts, cave-ins, seepages and fires. Behind the bond sits the Well Plugging and Abandonment Trust Fund, funded by a fee of up to two hundred dollars a year for each well that has been inactive two years or longer, which the commission uses to plug and abandon wells and complete the required surface restoration where the bonded operator cannot meet its obligation.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at sections 57-905 and 57-923. THE NEGATIVE MATTERS MORE THAN THE RULE AND HERE IS THE INSTRUMENT BEHIND IT. All 229 section catchlines in Chapter 57, the chapter titled Oil, Gas, and Other Minerals, were enumerated from the Legislature's own chapter index and searched. The word "surface" appears in none of them. Controls confirm the search works: "landowner" returns four sections, "abandon" five, "pooling" two, "royalty" one. The two catchlines containing "damage" are about easements across public lands and about injuring a pipeline. So Nebraska has no surface damage act, no statutory notice to a surface owner before drilling, no accommodation provision and no surface use agreement requirement anywhere in that chapter, and the surface owner's protection is that the state holds money against the site being restored. What that instrument cannot exclude is a duty inside a section whose catchline does not mention the surface, a provision in another chapter, or a common law rule; the text of sections 57-905 and 57-906 was read and neither imposes anything on an operator towards a surface owner. Nebraska's regulations at Title 267 have not been read at all and are the obvious next place to look.

Neb. Rev. Stat. § 57-703

Nebraska taxes oil and natural gas severed from the soil at three percent of the value of nonstripper oil and natural gas, and two percent on oil produced from properties producing stripper oil, valued immediately after severance at the place of severance. The tax is paid by the first purchaser where the oil or gas is sold in the state, and by the person severing it where it is sold outside, and the remitter must deduct from the amount due to the persons owning an interest in the oil or gas, or in the proceeds, their proportionate share before paying them. On top of that the commission levies a conservation charge on the value at the well of all oil and gas produced, saved and sold or transported from the premises, at a rate it fixes by order and may vary, capped by statute at fifteen mills on the dollar. Everyone owning an interest, a working interest, a royalty interest, payments out of production or any other interest is liable to the producer for that charge in proportion to their ownership at the time of production, and the remitter is required to deduct it. Oil and gas used in producing operations or for repressuring or recycling is exempt from both, and the conservation charge also exempts the interests of the United States, the state and its political subdivisions, and of any Indian or Indian tribe in oil or gas produced from land under United States supervision.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at sections 57-703 for the rate, 57-702 for who pays it, 57-708 for the deduction, and 57-919 for the conservation charge. Nebraska is the clearest case on this record of a state answering the royalty question in terms and answering it twice. Where Kentucky's coal and gas taxes exclude an arm's length royalty from the definition of the taxpayer, and West Virginia's section is silent on how the tax is borne, Nebraska requires the deduction: section 57-708 uses the word shall, and section 57-919 names the royalty interest expressly among the interests liable to the producer. So a Nebraska royalty owner bears both, in proportion. On the conservation charge, note that the rate is not in the statute. Fifteen mills is the ceiling the Legislature set, and the commission fixes the actual figure by order and changes it: the commission's own site records a decrease to seven mills on the dollar effective May 1, 2022. This record has read the statutory ceiling and the commission's notice of that change, and has not read the order itself, so the rate table gives the ceiling and says where the current figure comes from. WHAT IS NOT READ: section 57-704 on timing and the statement filed, and whether any Nebraska decision has construed the deduction.