Virginia mineral rights

Va. Code § 45.2-400

Where a claim to coal, minerals, ore, oil or subsurface substances under Virginia land, or the right to enter to explore for them, derives from a writing made 35 years or more before the action is brought, it is prima facie presumed that no such substances exist under the land. The presumption applies only where for 35 years or more the right has not been exercised, the claimant has never been charged taxes on it, all the taxes on the land have been charged to and paid by the landowner, and no deed of the claim has been recorded; or where the right was exercised, the minerals are exhausted and mining has been abandoned for 35 years or more. It does not apply to lands lying west of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at section 45.2-400 in the Code of Virginia on the Division of Legislative Automated Systems site, which stamps the page 7/31/2026 as the date the compilation is current to. Two things here have no counterpart on this record. The first is the mechanism. Ohio, North Dakota, Michigan and Indiana all end an interest by deeming it abandoned after a period of non use, and Kentucky ends one by conveying it away after seven years of production with the owner still missing. All five are statements about the owner. Virginia instead presumes, as a matter of evidence, that the minerals were never there, which is a statement about geology. The second is the exception, and it is the reason to read the section rather than a summary of it: the presumption does not reach lands west of the Blue Ridge Mountains. On any ordinary understanding of Virginia geography that is where the coalfields are, so the provision withholds itself from the part of the state where severed mineral claims are most common. This record has NOT read anything explaining why, and does not speculate. Note also the tax element, which does real work: the presumption is available only if the claimant was never charged taxes on the claim and the landowner paid all the taxes on the land. The section's history runs from 1924 through the 2021 special session recodification.

Va. Code § 45.2-401

The owner of land subject to such a claim may bring an action to extinguish it, naming the person from whom the claim derives, or that person's successors as unknown defendants. The court must allow at least six months from the docketing of the case, during which the defendant may explore for and discover commercial minerals. Absent satisfactory evidence to the contrary the court presumes none exist, declares the claim a cloud on the title, releases the land from it and extinguishes it. If the defendant does prove commercial minerals exist, the court instead orders them charged with taxes according to law.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at section 45.2-401. This is the operative half of the presumption in section 45.2-400 and it is adversarial from beginning to end, which distinguishes it sharply from every other extinguishing mechanism on this record. Ohio, North Dakota and Michigan put the burden on the mineral owner to have done something in the last twenty years, and Indiana attaches the consequence to the passage of time alone. Virginia requires the landowner to sue, to name the claimant or their unknown successors as defendants, and then hands the defendant a statutory opportunity to defeat the case by going out and finding minerals: the court must allow not less than six months during which the defendant may explore and discover. The consequence of winning that fight is also unusual and worth noting: the defendant who proves commercial minerals exist does not simply keep the claim, the court orders the minerals charged with taxes according to law, which is the same tax element that made the presumption available in the first place. WHAT IS NOT READ: the venue provision it cross-refers to, and any Virginia decision applying either section.

Va. Code § 45.2-602

A coal owner or lessee with more than a 50 percent interest in the coal on a tract may petition the circuit court to impress a trust on the interests of unknown or missing owners of that coal. The petition must describe the tract, list all known, missing and unknown owners, set out the efforts made to find them, and propose lease terms typical of other arm's length leases in the area, and the petitioner must satisfy the court that a diligent effort was made. If development appears advantageous to the unknown or missing owners the court declares a trust, appoints a trustee and authorises a lease on terms the order fixes. The court may not authorise a trustee's lease over the interest of any owner whose identity and location are known or become known, and such an owner may intervene as of right at any time before judgment to establish title, in which case the action is dismissed at the petitioner's cost. The trustee holds and invests the proceeds for the missing owners and may spend up to a tenth of the fund searching for them. Five years after first commercial production the proceeds are disposed of under the Virginia Disposition of Unclaimed Property Act.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at sections 45.2-602, 45.2-604 and 45.2-605. This is the same machinery Montana, Pennsylvania and Kentucky use for an owner nobody can find, and Virginia's version answers the endgame differently from all three. Montana and Pennsylvania simply hold the money. Kentucky, after seven years of commercial production, conveys the mineral interest itself to the surface owner. Virginia does neither: after five years the MONEY goes to the state's unclaimed property regime, where the owner or their heirs can still claim it, and nothing in what was read moves the coal interest itself out of the missing owner's hands. So the thing at risk in Virginia is the royalty, not the estate. Two further points are in the text. The threshold is a bare majority of the coal, more than 50 percent, which is lower than West Virginia's three quarters and lower than section 45.2-607's two thirds for known owners. And the protection for an owner who turns up is strong: the court may not authorise a lease over a known owner's interest at all, and intervention is as of right. WHAT IS NOT READ: section 45.2-603 on the advertisement required, and section 45.2-606 on fees, expenses and costs.

Va. Code § 45.2-607

A coal owner or lessee with at least a two-thirds interest in the coal on a tract who seeks to extract it may petition the circuit court to establish a trust for the KNOWN coal owners. The petition must describe the tract, list all known owners, and propose lease terms typical of arm's length leases in the area. The petitioner must satisfy the court that a diligent effort was made to obtain each minority owner's consent, and must demonstrate that production by the petitioner's lessee is of economic benefit to all parties, that the economic value of the coal is lost and the benefit of owning it decreased if it is not produced, and that there is no practical way to divide the coal among the owners without extracting it. Notice of the petition goes to the party subject to it by registered or certified mail with return receipt. The court may appoint a trustee and authorise a lease, and must escrow, or direct the trustee to escrow, the proceeds attributable to each minority interest until that owner's claim is established to the court's satisfaction.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at section 45.2-607. This is the provision that puts Virginia in a category of its own on this record, because it reaches an owner who is not missing at all. Every other majority or substitute mechanism here is aimed at somebody who cannot be found: Montana's, Pennsylvania's, Kentucky's and Virginia's own trust for missing coal owners all require a diligent search first. West Virginia's three-quarters cotenancy rule does bind a known holdout, and pays them the best royalty in the tract by statute. Virginia's section 45.2-607 binds a known, identified minority coal owner who has simply refused, through a court-appointed trustee leasing on their behalf, with the proceeds escrowed rather than fixed by a statutory formula. The threshold is two thirds and it is measured on the coal interest. Note what the petitioner has to prove: not just that a lease is fair, but that the coal is a wasting asset and that it cannot be physically divided. WHAT IS NOT READ: what happens to escrowed proceeds if the minority owner never establishes a claim, whether any equivalent exists for gas or for other minerals, and any Virginia decision applying the section.

Va. Code § 45.2-1621

No conveyance, reservation or exception of coal is deemed to include coalbed methane gas. The section does not affect a coal operator's right to vent coalbed methane for safety purposes or to release it in connection with mining operations, and it does not disturb any settlement of a dispute, or any judgment or governmental order, about the ownership or development of coalbed methane made or entered into before April 13, 2010.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at section 45.2-1621. This is a rule of construction for mineral instruments in a single sentence, and it is the second one this record holds: Kentucky's constitution presumes what an old severance meant about the METHOD of coal extraction, and Virginia's code settles what a coal conveyance does not reach at all. Both matter for the same reason, which is that the instruments in question are old and were drafted before anybody was arguing about the gas in the seam. Note the limits, because they are real. The section is prospective in effect on disputes: settlements, judgments and governmental orders made before April 13, 2010 are untouched, which is a substantial carve-out in a coalfield where the ownership fight is older than the section. And it says nothing about who does own the coalbed methane, only who does not get it by owning the coal. Virginia's answer to the ownership fight itself is procedural rather than substantive: the Gas and Oil Board force-pools the unit and the royalties go into escrow until the coal claimant and the gas claimant sort it out. That machinery is in this state's gaps rather than on this page.

Va. Code § 45.2-402

Except as the deed the mineral owner takes title under provides otherwise, the owner of minerals is presumed to own the shell, container chamber, passage or space opened underground for the removal of the minerals, with a full right to haul and transport minerals from other lands through it and to pass people, materials, equipment, water and air through it, and no injunction lies to stop that use. For the coal mineral estate specifically, unless the instrument creating the ownership or lease expressly excepts it, the coal owner or lessee keeps the right to any coal left in place after the surrounding coal is removed, and the right to use the void the removal created. Inside a current mine permit that void may be used for activity related to removing coal from any permitted lands; in a sealed mine with no permit left, only with the void owner's consent, which may not be unreasonably withheld once reasonable compensation has been offered, judged against what other mine void leases in the area pay. None of the void provisions bears on ownership of natural gas or coalbed methane.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at section 45.2-402, in the chapter Virginia titles "Presumptions Regarding Ownership". No other state on this record answers who owns the space a mine leaves behind, and it is not an academic question: a worked-out seam is a haulage route, a ventilation path and a storage volume, and somebody owns it. Three things are worth separating. The presumption is defeasible by the deed, so it is a default and not a rule. The coal-specific subsection was added in 2012 and reaches further than the general presumption, because it gives the coal owner the remnant coal as well as the void. And the last subsection says in terms that none of this has any bearing on ownership of natural gas or coalbed methane, which is the fight the rule above is about, so the two provisions are deliberately kept apart. Contracts in effect on July 1, 2012 that prohibit such use, or that pay the lessor for it, are preserved.

Va. Code § 55.1-407

Every written contract, every deed conveying an estate or term, every deed of gift, deed of trust or mortgage conveying real estate, and every bill of sale or contract for the sale of personal property left in the grantor's possession, is void as to all purchasers for valuable consideration without notice who are not parties to it, and as to lien creditors, until and except from the time it is recorded in the county or city where the property is. Recording elsewhere does not help: the instrument stays void as to other property until recorded where that property lies. Mere possession of the real estate is not, of itself, notice to purchasers for value. An instrument in the form of a quitclaim or release does not stop its grantee being a purchaser for valuable consideration without notice, and is not itself notice of any unrecorded conveyance or encumbrance. Creditors and purchasers are not confined to those of and from the grantor: they extend to everyone who, but for the deed, would have had title to the property or a right to subject it to their debts.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read in the Code of Virginia on the Division of Legislative Automated Systems site, which stamps the page 7/31/2026 as the date the compilation is current to. Three provisions in the same chapter change what this rule means and each was read: section 55.1-408 makes recording in one county useless as to property in another; section 55.1-412 construes "creditors" and "purchasers" broadly enough to reach anyone who would otherwise have had title; and section 55.1-413 gives a subsequent purchaser a lien for purchase money paid before notice, even where the earlier deed was recorded before he became a complete purchaser. The quotable oddity is the express statement that possession of the land is not of itself notice to a purchaser for value, which cuts against the common assumption that somebody living on a tract puts the world on inquiry. No Virginia opinion classifying the state as a notice or race-notice jurisdiction has been fetched, so this record applies no label.

Va. Code § 55.1-414

A purchaser is not affected by the record of a deed or contract made by a person under whom their title is not derived, nor by the record of a deed or contract made by someone under whom their title IS derived if that person made it before acquiring the legal title of record. Where two or more writings about the same property are recorded in the same county or city on the same day and stamped with the identical time, the instrument number decides which was first, and the first recorded has priority. Writings are recorded in the county for property outside the corporate limits of a city having a court where writings may be recorded, and in the city for property inside those limits.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at sections 55.1-414, 55.1-410 and 55.1-411. This is the rule that tells a title searcher where the search stops, and it is the same proposition North Dakota states, worded differently: the record only charges you with what is in your own chain. The wild-deed half is the second clause, which excludes an instrument made by a predecessor before that predecessor took legal title of record, so an estoppel-by-deed argument does not get in through the recording act. The same-day tie-breaker is a modern provision and worth knowing because it is mechanical: identical time stamps are resolved by instrument number, not by proof of who arrived first. WHAT IS NOT READ: the indexing provisions in Title 55.1 Chapter 6, which govern how the clerk indexes what is recorded, and any Virginia decision applying section 55.1-414.

Va. Code § 45.2-1632

Within one day of filing an application for a permit for a gas or oil operation, the applicant must give notice of it to every surface owner, coal owner and mineral owner on the tract to be drilled; every coal operator with a registered operation plan there; every surface owner on a tract where the surface is to be disturbed; every gas, oil or royalty owner within half the statutory well spacing distance or half the distance to the nearest well in the same pool, whichever is less, or inside an established drilling unit; every coal operator holding or applying for a mining or prospecting permit within 500 feet of the proposed well, or 750 feet for a coalbed methane well; every coal or mineral owner on a tract within those same distances; and every certificated gas storage field operator whose area includes the well or whose boundary is within 1,250 feet of it. The notice must state the time within which objections may be made and where to send them. Within seven days the applicant must also notify the local governing body and publish notice in a newspaper of general circulation. An applicant must make a reasonable effort, and where a person cannot be identified or located the published notice is sufficient as to them.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at section 45.2-1632. Two things distinguish this from the notice statutes on this record in Colorado, New Mexico, North Dakota and Kentucky. It is measured in one day from the filing rather than in days before entry, so the surface owner learns of the application at the same time as the regulator rather than shortly before a rig arrives. And the notice list is not just the surface owner: it runs to coal owners, mineral owners, coal operators, nearby royalty owners and gas storage operators, which is a map of everyone Virginia thinks has a stake in a well, and the same list then defines who has standing to object. The distances are worth keeping, because they are the operative numbers: 500 feet for a conventional well and 750 for a coalbed methane well as to coal interests, and 1,250 feet as to a certificated storage field. WHAT IS NOT READ: section 45.2-1616 on statewide spacing, which supplies the distance the royalty owner notice radius is derived from.

Va. Code § 45.2-1637

Objections to a new permit or a permit modification must be filed within 15 days of receiving the notice and must state their reasons. The only objections a surface owner may raise are that the operations plan for soil erosion and sediment control is inadequate or ineffective; that measures beyond the well's water-protection string are needed to protect freshwater-bearing strata; that the permitted work will be a hazard to anyone's safety; that the location of a coalbed methane well or its pipeline will unreasonably infringe on the surface owner's use of the surface, so long as a reasonable alternative site is available within the unit and granting the objection will not materially impair a right in a valid agreement between the surface owner and the operator or their predecessors; and the same infringement objection where the surface owner is an interstate park commission. A royalty owner's objections are confined to three grounds of their own, and coal owners, mineral owners and gas storage operators each have their own limited list.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at section 45.2-1637. The fourth ground is a statutory accommodation doctrine, and comparing it with the case-law version is the point of putting it here. Texas asks whether the surface owner has a reasonable alternative use of the SURFACE and leaves the burden on the surface owner throughout. Virginia asks whether there is a reasonable alternative SITE for the well within the unit, which puts the alternative on the operator's side of the ledger, and it is decided by the Director on a permit objection within fifteen days rather than by a lawsuit. What narrows it sharply is that it applies only to a coalbed methane well or its pipeline. For a conventional gas or oil well a Virginia surface owner has no objection about their own use of the land at all: the other three grounds are about erosion, groundwater and safety. And an existing agreement between the surface owner and the operator can defeat the objection.

Va. Code § 45.2-1649

Where a surface owner takes all or part of their domestic water from a water well and that supply has been materially affected by contamination, or by partial or complete interruption, proximately resulting from a gas well operation within 1,320 feet of the water well, the operator must promptly provide a replacement supply capable of meeting the uses the old one met. The operator may enter the surface land at reasonable times and in a reasonable manner to sample any water well within 1,320 feet of a proposed or existing gas well that the surface owner or occupant is actually using for domestic purposes. If the surface owner or occupant refuses to allow the sampling, or causes the operator to be prevented from sampling, the operator must promptly notify the Department, which keeps a record of such notifications, and the surface owner is then not entitled to the replacement remedy.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at sections 45.2-1649 and 45.2-1648, which have to be read together because the second one can take the first one away. The pair is a bargain the statute makes explicit: the operator gets a right to establish the baseline by sampling your well, and if you refuse the sample you lose the replacement remedy. No other water supply provision on this record does that. Compare Kentucky, whose duty is wider in every direction that matters to who is protected, running to any owner of an interest in real property, to agricultural and industrial as well as domestic use, and to any source rather than a well, with no distance limit at all. Virginia is narrower and more definite: a surface owner, domestic use, a water well, 1,320 feet, and a duty to provide a replacement promptly. Neither statute says who decides whether the disruption was proximately caused. WHAT IS NOT READ: whether the 1,320 feet creates a presumption of causation or only a boundary on the duty, and any Virginia decision applying either section.

Va. Code § 58.1-3712

No chapter of the Code of Virginia's taxation title administered by the Department of Taxation or by another state agency imposes a tax on the value or volume of mineral production. What exists is local and optional. Any county or city may levy a license tax on every person engaging in the business of severing gases from the earth, at a rate not exceeding one percent of the gross receipts from the sale of gases severed there, measured at fair market value when used, sold or placed in transit; a further local tax of up to one percent may be adopted for the Coal and Gas Road Improvement Fund, and a further one percent beyond both. Any county or city may also levy a severance license tax on a coal producer who sells or uses coal severed there, at one percent of gross receipts, or three quarters of one percent from small mines, and may levy the same again as a coal road improvement severance license tax. In calculating fair market value for gas severed in connection with coal mining, no deductions are allowed, including depreciation, compression, marketing fees, overhead, maintenance, transportation fees and personal property taxes.

Checked July 31, 2026. Read at sections 58.1-3712, 58.1-3713, 58.1-3713.4 and 58.1-3741. The negative rests on an instrument and here is the instrument, so a reader can repeat it: the Code of Virginia's own table of contents for Title 58.1 was enumerated, chapter by chapter, across Subtitle I (taxes administered by the Department of Taxation) and Subtitle II (taxes administered by other agencies). Neither subtitle contains a severance, production or extraction tax on minerals; the nearest things are the Forest Products Tax and the Natural Gas Consumption Tax, which are neither. Every severance tax Virginia has is in Subtitle III, Local Taxes, Chapter 37, License Taxes, and every one of them is permissive. What that instrument cannot exclude is a tax imposed outside Title 58.1 altogether. Note who each tax names: a person engaging in the BUSINESS of severing gases, and a coal PRODUCER that sells or utilizes coal. Nothing read makes any of them reach a royalty interest, and nothing read forbids a lease from allocating them; no Virginia decision on the point has been fetched. The no-deductions rule for coalbed methane produced in connection with coal mining is the provision most likely to matter to a gas owner in the coalfield counties, and there is a county-specific override for Buchanan County that was not read.