North Carolina mineral rights

N.C. Gen. Stat. s. 1-42.1, Certain ancient mineral claims extinguished in certain counties

Between 1965 and 1985 the General Assembly passed the same statute nine times, at G.S. 1-42.1 through 1-42.9, working through the state a group of counties at a time. Each one takes a person who has an unbroken chain of record title to the SURFACE for a stated period, where a severed oil, gas or mineral interest is not being mined, drilled, worked or operated, is not in the adverse possession of another, or whose record holder has not listed it for ad valorem tax for a stated number of years, and gives that person a marketable title to the surface free of the mineral interest. Any such interest founded on a reservation or exception in an instrument that old is then declared null and void. The only defence was a sworn notice recorded in the register of deeds within two years of the date the section names. Those windows closed on 1 September 1967, 1 September 1973, 1 September 1976, 1 September 1979, 1 September 1981, 1 July 1983, 1 September 1984 and 1 January 1988. A North Carolina owner in a covered county whose interest went in one of those sweeps cannot cure it now, and nothing in the record would tell them so.

Checked August 2, 2026. The whole of chapter 1, Article 4 was fetched from the General Assembly's own site on 2026-08-02, 67,845 bytes returning 55,708 characters of text, and all nine sections were read end to end. Nothing else on this record works this way. Every other extinguishment here can still be answered by filing something today, because the clock either rolls or has not started; these are one-shot historical sweeps with a fixed door that shut. The root of title is fifty years in 1-42.1 through 1-42.8 and thirty years in 1-42.9, and the tax-listing limb is ten years in the early sections and five in 1-42.9. Read the trigger carefully, because it is not the same in all of them: 1-42.1(a) joins the not-being-worked limb and the not-listed-for-tax limb with OR, so either one is enough, while 1-42.9(a) joins them with AND, so both must hold. Three further things are worth knowing and are on this page rather than buried. The sections exclude governmental claims, State or federal, and claims by reason of unexpired oil, gas or mineral releases. Each one recites its own purpose as facilitating land title transactions. And 1-42.9(f) directs that the date 1984 be substituted for the date 1983 each time it appears in the section, when 1983 does not appear in the section at all as codified; that is quoted here and not resolved. No North Carolina decision was read, and how these sections have actually been applied is not known to this record.

N.C. Gen. Stat. s. 1-42.1(d), the county limitation

The nine sections limit themselves to counties in two different ways and the difference decides who was affected. In G.S. 1-42.1 through 1-42.4 the limiting sentence is the last sentence of subsection (d), and it says the provisions of THIS SUBSECTION apply to the listed counties. Subsection (d) is the duty to list the interest for ad valorem tax, to file notice, and to have the county commissioners publish in a newspaper. The extinguishment itself is in subsections (a) to (c), which say nothing about counties. In G.S. 1-42.5 through 1-42.8 the limiting sentence instead says this SECTION, or this act, applies only to the named county, which reaches the extinguishment too. And G.S. 1-42.9 carries no county sentence at all, and its catchline drops the words in certain counties that the others carry. So on the face of the text it is not clear whether the first four sections voided mineral interests statewide or only in the counties their subsection (d) names.

Checked August 2, 2026. Read on 2026-08-02 across all nine sections. The counties named, in order: 1-42.1(d) fifteen, quoted above; 1-42.2(d) twenty five, adding Rowan, Catawba, Davidson, Haywood, Iredell, Madison, Moore, Robeson, Scotland and Yancey to most of the first list; 1-42.3(d) twenty more, Alleghany, Burke, Caldwell, Cherokee, Clay, Cleveland, Gaston, Gates, Graham, Halifax, Henderson, Macon, McDowell, Mitchell, Polk, Randolph, Stanly, Surry, Watauga and Wilkes; then Ashe, Avery, Alleghany again, Chatham and Rutherford one at a time. A section's catchline is not the statute, which is why the words in certain counties in the heading of 1-42.1 cannot settle this. This record takes no view on which reading is right, because settling it needs North Carolina case law and none was fetched. It is stated here rather than resolved because a reader whose land is not in a named county deserves to know the question exists, and because a page that quietly picked one reading would be asserting something nobody read.

N.C. Gen. Stat. s. 1-42.5, Additional ancient mineral claims extinguished in Avery County

G.S. 1-42.5 is the one section of the nine that fixes no calendar date anywhere in it. A person with an unbroken chain of record title to the surface for at least thirty years, where the severed interest is not being mined, drilled, worked or operated and is not in the adverse possession of another, takes a marketable title free of any mineral interest depending on a reservation or exception in an instrument recorded before that thirty year period, and those interests are declared null and void. The notice that preserves an interest must be recorded WITHIN THAT THIRTY YEAR PERIOD rather than by a date the statute names. Because nothing anchors it to 1981, the section works as a rolling thirty year marketable title rule against severed minerals, and it is live today in one county.

Checked August 2, 2026. Read at G.S. 1-42.5 on 2026-08-02, the section in full, and compared line by line against the other eight because the absence of a date is the kind of thing that is easy to miss. Two other differences from its siblings: it drops the ad valorem tax listing limb from its trigger entirely, so only the not-being-worked and not-adversely-possessed conditions matter, and its notice must state the name of the surface owner without the words if known that the other sections use. Its subsection (d) required the county commissioners to publish notice within ninety days after ratification and again within ninety days before 30 June 1982, in newspapers published in or circulating in Avery, Burke, Mitchell and Watauga, which is a wider publication footprint than the county the section applies to. The limiting sentence says the provisions of this SECTION apply to Avery, so unlike the first four sections there is no ambiguity about reach here. Enacted by 1981, c. 329, s. 1, the same session law whose section 2 amended 1-42.3. Whether any Avery County interest has actually been extinguished under it is not known to this record.

N.C. Gen. Stat. s. 47B-3, Exceptions

North Carolina has a Real Property Marketable Title Act at chapter 47B, and it is the ordinary shape: thirty years of record title gives a marketable record title, and every right, estate, interest, claim or charge depending on anything that happened before that thirty year period is declared null and void, whether held by a natural person or a corporation, private or governmental, under a disability or not. Its section 47B-4 adds that no disability or lack of knowledge of any kind delays the commencement of or suspends the running of the period. Then section 47B-3 lists fourteen exceptions the act does not touch, and the fifth of them reads, in its entirety, rights of any owners of mineral rights. That is the only occurrence of the word mineral in the whole chapter.

Checked August 2, 2026. The whole of chapter 47B was fetched and read on 2026-08-02, all nine sections, 14,016 characters of text, and the word mineral occurs exactly once in it, in the exception quoted. Read that against Florida, where the equivalent act contains ZERO occurrences of mineral and therefore reaches severed minerals precisely because it never carves them out. Same instrument, opposite result, and one line of text between them. The exception here is also drafted more narrowly than Utah's, which protects not only the interest but the development, mining, production and access rights that go with it; North Carolina's five words say nothing about access. Two other exceptions in the same list matter to a mineral owner and are easy to miss: (3) preserves the rights of a person in present, actual and open possession of the property while that possession lasts, and (12) takes land registered under the Torrens Law in chapter 43 out of the act altogether. Chapter 43 was not read. Neither was any North Carolina decision on chapter 47B, and the relationship between this act and the nine extinguishment sections in chapter 1, which were being enacted on both sides of it in 1973, was not read and is not asserted here.

N.C. Gen. Stat. s. 47B-1, Declaration of policy and statement of purpose

Nothing read for this record ends a North Carolina mineral interest because the owner did not use it. There is no dormant mineral act. The nine extinguishment sections are not dormancy statutes in the usual sense either: they ask what is in the record and whether the interest was listed for tax, not whether the owner did anything with it, and eight of the nine have closed. The marketable record title act expressly spares minerals. So outside Avery County there is no period of inactivity to survive, no statement of claim that would mean anything, and no notice of lapse for a surface owner to serve.

Checked August 2, 2026. Established by enumeration with controls on 2026-08-02, in two instruments, and neither is a search. FIRST, the chapter index of the entire General Statutes was fetched from the General Assembly's own table of contents and enumerated: 396 chapter titles, of which not one contains dormant, mineral or sever, against controls of mine 4, quarr 1, oil 4, marketable 1, property 8 and water 6. Note why the controls matter here: the word mining scores zero across all 396 titles while chapter 74 is titled Mines and Quarries, so a term count without controls would have produced a confident wrong answer. SECOND, the six chapters where such a provision would actually sit were each fetched whole and counted: chapter 1 Civil Procedure at 828,747 characters and 767 catchlines, chapter 47 Probate and Registration at 268,933 and 200, chapter 47B at 14,016 and 8, chapter 74 Mines and Quarries at 128,467 and 73, chapter 105 Taxation at 2,168,057 and 908, and chapter 113 Conservation and Development at 783,643 and 322. The word dormant appears NOT ONCE in those 4,191,863 characters, against controls in the same corpus of oil 267, gas 263, surface owner 54 and royalty 13 in chapter 113, severance tax 14 and royalty 40 in chapter 105, and mineral 121 and severed 17 in chapter 1. State the limit plainly: this is a title-level enumeration of the whole code plus a full-text read of six chapters, not a section-level enumeration of all 396, and no North Carolina decision was read, so it says nothing about judge-made doctrine.

N.C. Gen. Stat. s. 113-423(b), Required lease terms, Maximum Duration

North Carolina puts a statutory end date on the instrument itself. Any lease of oil or gas rights, or any other conveyance of any kind separating rights to oil or gas from the freehold estate of surface property, expires at the end of ten years from the date it was executed unless oil or gas is then being produced for commercial purposes from the land. If at any time after that ten years commercial production stops for six months or more, all rights to the oil or gas revert to the SURFACE OWNER of the property. Production is defined to include injection, withdrawal, storage or disposal operations and the payment of rentals or royalties, so a paying lessee is safe. No assignment or agreement waiving the subsection is valid or enforceable, and no force majeure clause operates to extend a lease past those limits.

Checked August 2, 2026. Read at G.S. 113-423(b) on 2026-08-02, from chapter 113 Article 27 fetched whole at 115,948 characters. Read the words the subsection reaches, because they are wider than the word lease: any other conveyance of any kind separating rights to oil or gas from the freehold estate of surface property. On its face that is not confined to leases at all, and how far it reaches an outright severance deed is exactly the question a North Carolina lawyer would be asked; nothing was read that answers it and this record does not guess. Two consequences are worth stating anyway. Where it applies, the destination is the surface owner rather than the person the rights were carved out of, which is the opposite of Indiana and Iowa. And it runs on the CALENDAR and on production, not on any notice: nobody serves anything, nobody records anything, and the ten years pass whatever the parties intended. The anti-waiver sentence and the force majeure sentence were both read twice because a clause of that kind is usually softened somewhere else in the section, and neither is. The subsection was enacted by S.L. 2012-143 and last touched by S.L. 2025-25.

N.C. Gen. Stat. s. 1-42.1(d), listing and taxation of severed interests

Every one of the nine extinguishment sections carries the same second limb, and it outlives the windows that have closed. Oil, gas and mineral interests severed from the surface fee must be listed for ad valorem taxes, and notice of the interest must be filed in writing and recorded in the register of deeds book that G.S. 1-42 provides, to be effective against the surface fee owner or that owner's creditors, purchasers, heirs or assigns. Subsurface oil, gas and mineral interests are then to be assessed for ad valorem taxes as real property, and those taxes are to be collected and foreclosed in the manner authorised by chapter 105 of the General Statutes.

Checked August 2, 2026. Read on 2026-08-02 at G.S. 1-42.1(d), and the same sentence appears in the corresponding subsection of 1-42.2, 1-42.3, 1-42.4, 1-42.6, 1-42.7, 1-42.8 and 1-42.9. It is the practical answer to what can still move a North Carolina mineral interest today, since the extinguishment windows in those same sections are shut: the interest carries its own tax bill and can be foreclosed for its own arrears. That puts North Carolina with Iowa and Minnesota, which also assess a severed interest separately, and against Alabama, which takes it off the roll permanently for a single payment. Be careful about the reach of the recording half of this sentence. It is drafted as a condition of effectiveness against the surface owner and those claiming under them, which is a different thing from extinguishment, and the county limitation described in the rule above applies to this subsection in the first four sections. The chapter 105 foreclosure machinery itself was not read, so nothing here describes what notice the mineral owner gets, what a sale costs, or whether the surface owner has any right to redeem, and no rate or valuation method for a nonproducing severed interest was found.

N.C. Gen. Stat. s. 113-425, Registry of landmen required

Before any oil and gas lease, or any other conveyance separating oil or gas rights from the freehold, is executed, the developer or operator or any agent of theirs must give the lessor a copy of the statutory Part and a publication produced by the Consumer Protection Division of the Department of Justice called Oil and Gas Leases, Landowners' Rights, and must give both to the surface owner as well where the lessor is somebody else. A separate section makes the Department of Justice, in consultation with the North Carolina Real Estate Commission, develop that publication and keep it updated. And a third makes the Department of Environmental Quality establish and maintain a registry of landmen: nobody may act, offer to act, or hold themselves out as a landman in the state unless registered, with landman defined by four functions including negotiating for the acquisition or divestiture of oil or gas rights.

Checked August 2, 2026. Read at G.S. 113-425, 113-426 and 113-423(a) on 2026-08-02, and the registry was then read on the Department's own page the same day, where 109 individuals and companies are listed by name with a link to the first page of each application, the second page withheld as confidential. This is the only provision on this record that regulates the person who knocks on the door rather than the operator who drills. Registration may be denied, suspended or revoked, or a civil penalty imposed, for fraudulently or deceptively obtaining a registration, using an expired, suspended or revoked one, falsely representing oneself as registered, engaging in any other fraud, deception, misrepresentation or knowing omission of material facts related to oil or gas interests, or having a similar licence denied, suspended or revoked in another jurisdiction, and an applicant may challenge the decision. The application requires the applicant's name, or the names and addresses of all principals where it is not an individual, business contact details, a social security or federal employer identification number, and a list of the other jurisdictions where the applicant operates. What was not read: the contents of the Landowners' Rights publication itself, and whether the registry is checked or enforced against anybody.

N.C. Gen. Stat. s. 113-421, Presumptive liability for water contamination

North Carolina reverses the burden on water. It is presumed that an oil or gas developer or operator is responsible for contamination of all water supplies within a half mile radius of a wellhead that is part of its activities. The presumption can be rebutted only by proving, on the balance of probabilities, one of four things: that the contamination pre-dated drilling as shown by a pre-drilling test, that the owner refused access for that test, that the supply is not within half a mile, or that something else caused it. Where a contaminated supply is inside the radius the operator must, on top of any other remedy including damages, provide a replacement water supply adequate in quality and quantity to the surface owner and to everyone else who was using it. It must also compensate the surface owner for damage to a water supply in use beforehand, the cost of repairing personal property, and livestock, crops or timber at market value, must reclaim within two years, must post a bond running to the surface owner for that reclamation, and must post a bond to the State of at least one million dollars against environmental damage.

Checked August 2, 2026. Read at G.S. 113-421 on 2026-08-02. Three things around the presumption are worth as much as the presumption itself. The surface owner chooses whether compensation comes as a single payment or as annual payments over a period of not less than ten years. Venue is the superior court of the county where the well is, and where the surface owner or their assignee wins an action for unpaid royalties or other damages the court SHALL award court costs and reasonable attorneys' fees to them. And subsection (d) makes conditions precedent, notice provisions and arbitration clauses in lease documents that have the effect of limiting access to that court void and unenforceable, which is the only provision on this record that voids an arbitration clause. Liability is joint and several among everyone having control over the activities that contributed. The pre-drilling testing that grounds the rebuttal is itself a required lease term at G.S. 113-423(f): every supply within half a mile tested at the operator's cost at least thirty days before drilling, then at six, twelve, eighteen and twenty four months after production starts and within thirty days of production ending, by an independent laboratory the surface owner selects from the Department's certified list, with all results public records the Department must post within thirty days. The surface owner may refuse the testing, and refusing it hands the operator one of its four defences.

N.C. Gen. Stat. s. 113-423.1, Surface activities

An operator must conduct oil and gas operations in a manner that accommodates the surface owner by minimising intrusion upon and damage to the surface, which the statute defines as selecting alternative locations for wells, roads, pipelines or production facilities, or employing alternative means of operation, where those are technologically sound, economically practicable and reasonably available. Failing that gives the surface owner a cause of action for compensatory damages and equitable relief. The procedure is what makes it bite: the surface owner must first show the use of the surface materially interfered with their own use, and once they have, the operator bears the burden of proving it minimised intrusion, after which the owner may rebut. The operator has an affirmative defence that it complied with a specific regulatory requirement, contractual obligation or land use plan provision, and the standard does not stop it using as much surface as is reasonable and necessary, nor override a contract that expressly provides for surface use or releases the operator.

Checked August 2, 2026. Read at G.S. 113-423.1 on 2026-08-02, the section in full. This is an accommodation doctrine with the burden of proof written into the statute, which is what separates it from the accommodation standards on this record that leave the burden where the common law puts it. Set the burden shift beside the escape hatches in the same subsection, because both are real: an express contractual provision for surface use, or a release, is expressly preserved, and so is compliance with a regulatory requirement as an affirmative defence. The section also says in terms that it does not preclude any other remedy allowed by law, does not stop the parties addressing surface use in a lease or surface use agreement, and does not alter local government authority over land use, which sits awkwardly beside G.S. 113-415.1 invalidating local ordinances that regulate oil and gas exploration, development and production and giving an operator a petition to preempt one. That preemption section was read only to its catchline.

N.C. Gen. Stat. s. 113-393, Development of lands as drilling unit by agreement or order of Commission

Where two or more separately owned tracts sit within an established drilling unit the owners may agree to integrate and develop them as one. Where they have not agreed, the Oil and Gas Commission shall require them to, for the prevention of waste or to avoid drilling unnecessary wells, after notice and hearing, on terms and conditions that are just and reasonable and afford the owner of each tract the opportunity to recover or receive its just and equitable share without unnecessary expense. Production allocated to a tract is treated as if produced from that tract by a well drilled on it. The operator the Commission designates may charge each other interested owner the actual expenditures required, not in excess of what are reasonable, including a reasonable charge for supervision, and may take the first production from the well until it has been reimbursed, after which it pays each owner their ratable share less reasonable operating expense. Where a dispute arises about those costs the Commission determines them.

Checked August 2, 2026. Read at G.S. 113-393 on 2026-08-02. What is absent is the informative part, and it is the same absence Arizona and Iowa have: there is no risk penalty percentage, no cost-free royalty fraction and no statutory royalty for a nonconsenting owner anywhere in the section. Set that beside Florida's three hundred percent carry, Washington's one hundred and fifty percent, and Alabama's three sixteenths free of every cost. A North Carolina owner integrated into a unit simply owes their actual share of reasonable cost, recovered out of production before they see anything. Three details in the same section: the charging provision is conditioned on due notice to all owners in the unit of the unit's creation and on the Commission having received no protest or hearing request, whether or not ten days have passed; where the Commission has no authority to compel integration each owner may drill on their own tract with allowable production prorated by area; and subsection (c) protects voluntary cooperative development agreements, including with royalty owners, from the state's trust and restraint of trade statutes. Section 113-392 defines the just and equitable share by reference to recoverable oil and gas in the developed area of the tract against the pool, and was read alongside.

N.C. Gen. Stat. s. 47-18, Conveyances, contracts to convey, options, and leases of land

North Carolina decides priority by the clock and by nothing else. No conveyance of land, contract to convey, option to purchase or convey, lease of land for more than three years, right of first refusal or right of first offer is valid to pass any property interest as against lien creditors or purchasers for value from the same grantor except from the time of its registration in the county where the land lies, and in each county where any part of it lies. Instruments registered with the register of deeds have priority based on the order of registration as determined by the time of registration. Where two are registered simultaneously the earliest document number breaks the tie, or the sequential book and page number where there is no document number, and that presumption is rebuttable.

Checked August 2, 2026. Read at G.S. 47-18(a) on 2026-08-02 from chapter 47 fetched whole. The words that are absent are the point. Every other recording rule read for this record conditions the later claimant's win on being without notice of the earlier instrument, or on being without notice AND first to record. This section conditions it on nothing but registration, and the priority sentence added in 2003 and refined in 2021 says so again in terms of time of registration. So a North Carolina purchaser who knows perfectly well about an unregistered mineral deed can still take free of it by getting to the register of deeds first. What that means for a mineral owner is that recording is not evidence of good faith, it is the whole of the entitlement. Subsection (b) preserves an old rule for instruments executed before 1885 and is spent. The recording office is the register of deeds of the county, and North Carolina keeps a second book beside the usual grantor and grantee indices, which the rule below describes. No North Carolina decision construing the section was read.

N.C. Gen. Stat. s. 1-42, Possession follows legal title; severance of surface and subsurface rights

Where the public records show that the surface and subsurface were at some previous time separated, neither side may prove adverse possession against the other out of any use of the other's estate. The holder of the subsurface cannot evidence any use of the surface, by itself, its predecessors, lessees or agents, as adverse possession against the surface owner, and the surface owner cannot evidence any use of the subsurface against the subsurface owner. The only way past that bar is a brief notice of intended use recorded with the register of deeds, in a book kept for the purpose, at the time the allegedly adverse use begins and IN EACH YEAR OF IT, giving four things: the date of beginning or recommencing, a description adequate to locate the property, the name and if known the address of the claimant of the right, and the deed or other instrument under which the right is claimed.

Checked August 2, 2026. Read at G.S. 1-42 on 2026-08-02. Two things make this worth publishing. It is symmetrical, which nothing else read here is: a surface owner working the minerals and a mineral owner using the surface are in exactly the same position, and both are barred by default. And the annual repetition is a real requirement, not a formality, because the section says the notice must be placed on record at the time of beginning the use and in each year of the same. The book this section provides for is the same book the nine extinguishment sections send their preservation notices to, and the same book the tax listing notice in those sections goes to, so it is a separate index a searcher has to ask for by name and would not find in the grantor and grantee indices. The first paragraph of the same section carries an ordinary presumption that a person with legal title was in possession, and adds that a record chain of title for thirty years before the action is prima facie evidence of possession. The section reached its present form through 1945, 1959 and 1965 amendments, the last of them in the same year as the first extinguishment statute. What was not read: whether any notice of intended use has ever been recorded anywhere, and any decision construing the section.

N.C. Gen. Stat. s. 113-423(c), Required lease terms, Minimum Royalty Payments

The statute fixes the money terms of the lease as well as its length. Any lease of oil or gas rights, or any other conveyance separating those rights from the freehold, must provide that the lessor receives a royalty of not less than twelve and one half percent of the proceeds of sale of all oil or gas produced from the lessor's just and equitable share, and that sum shall not be diminished by pre-production or post-production costs, fees or other charges assessed against the property owner. Payments must start no later than six months after the first sale and thereafter within sixty days of the end of each calendar quarter, and each payment must be accompanied by documentation of the period, the quantity sold and the price received, at a minimum. Unpaid royalties carry interest at twelve and one half percent a year from the due date. On written request the lessor may inspect and copy the operator's production and royalty records. A bonus or other initial payment is due within sixty days of execution and carries ten percent a year if late.

Checked August 2, 2026. Read at G.S. 113-423(c) and (d) on 2026-08-02. Two other subsections in the same section belong with it because they are the terms a landowner would otherwise have to negotiate for. Subsection (j) gives a SEVEN DAY RIGHT OF RESCISSION on any such lease, exercisable by either the lessor or the lessee by written notice within seven business days of execution, with the lessor returning anything paid, and requires bold and conspicuous notice of that right in the lease itself; nothing else on this record gives a mineral owner a cooling-off period. Subsection (i) requires a conspicuous boldface notice to lenders, which the surface owner must initial, advising them to get written confirmation from any mortgage holder that the lease will not breach the mortgage and risk foreclosure. Subsection (e) requires the lease to state whether the operator will use water from the property, estimate the amount, obtain the surface owner's permission, leave the domestic supply unrestricted, and pay fair market value for what it takes. Subsection (g) requires the lease and any assignment of it to be recorded within thirty days, and (h) requires written notice of an assignment to the lessor and to the surface owner within thirty days. What was not read: whether a lease that omits any of these terms is void, voidable, or simply read as containing them.

N.C. Gen. Stat. s. 116B-78, Agreement to locate property between property finders and owners

North Carolina's unclaimed property chapter defines mineral proceeds broadly: amounts payable for the extraction, production or sale of minerals, expressly including bonuses, royalties, compensatory royalties, shut-in royalties, minimum royalties and delay rentals, net revenue interests, overriding royalties, extraction and production payments, and amounts payable under joint operating, unit, pooling and farm-out agreements. It sets no special abandonment period for them, so they fall into the residual category and are presumed abandoned five years after the owner's right to demand them arises. The provision worth knowing sits in the section on property finders: where an agreement to locate property applies to mineral proceeds and provides for compensation that includes a portion of the underlying minerals, or of any mineral proceeds not then presumed abandoned, that provision is void and unenforceable.

Checked August 2, 2026. Read at G.S. 116B-52(7) and (8), 116B-53(c) and 116B-78(c) on 2026-08-02, chapter 116B fetched whole at 91,300 characters. The finder rule is aimed squarely at the arrangement where somebody who has found your unclaimed royalty money asks to be paid in a slice of the minerals themselves, and it kills that arrangement outright rather than capping it. The general limit in the same section is separate and also worth knowing: an agreement to locate property is void if it was made at any time from when the property became distributable until twenty four months after it was paid to the Treasurer, except an agreement with an attorney to file a claim or contest a denial. The absence of a mineral-specific abandonment period was checked by reading all sixteen periods in 116B-53(c), none of which mentions minerals, which is why the residual five year period applies. What was not read: how the Treasurer's unclaimed property programme actually handles a mineral interest as opposed to money, and whether the chapter ever reaches the interest itself rather than the proceeds.

N.C. Gen. Stat. s. 105-187.77, Tax on severance of energy minerals

An excise tax is levied on the privilege of severing energy minerals, meaning all forms of natural gas, oil and related condensates, and it is imposed on the producer. Oil and condensates pay five percent of the gross price paid. Gas is graded through nine brackets on its delivered to market value per thousand cubic feet, from nine tenths of one percent up to three dollars, by roughly a percentage point each dollar, to nine percent above ten dollars and one cent, and a producer may elect a marginal rate of eight tenths of one percent for a well the Commission finds cannot make a hundred thousand cubic feet a day. The producer pays for all owners and shall withhold from any payment due owners the proportionate tax due. Owner is defined to include the owner of a landowner's royalty interest and of an overriding royalty, and to exclude federal, state and local governmental royalty interests.

Checked August 2, 2026. Read at G.S. 105-187.76 to 105-187.84 on 2026-08-02. Grading a production tax by the price of the commodity is a fourth shape on this record: Nevada grades by the mine's profit margin, Wisconsin by dollars of net proceeds, Illinois by output, and North Carolina by the wellhead price per unit. Two provisions put duties on the owner rather than the operator. Section 105-187.83 requires the owner of a royalty interest to keep a record of all money received as royalty from each producing leasehold in the state, and a copy of every settlement sheet or statement showing the volume for which royalty was received and the severance tax deducted, and to give them to the Secretary of Revenue on request; the only comparable duty read here is Nevada's, which puts an annual filing on the person receiving a royalty. And 105-187.80(g) says the portion of the tax deducted from a royalty owner is calculated the same way as the portion the producer bears. Around the rates: a producer may subtract nine listed categories of actual cost of getting gas from the wellhead to the first purchaser before the rate applies, on records it must keep and prove; on-site use on the producer's own land is exempt up to a cumulative delivered to market value of one thousand two hundred dollars a year; a bond or irrevocable letter of credit at twice expected monthly liability is required, floored at two thousand dollars and capped at two million; and a return ninety days late requires the Department of Environmental Quality to suspend the producer's permit. The rate table was enacted in 2014 and last amended in 2020, and on what the regulator publishes no well has ever paid it.