Course outline

Title means ownership and the records that show it. What examining mineral title involves.

Fee simple absolute, the largest estate the law recognizes. Ownership as a bundle of sticks: possess, use, exclude, sell, lease, pass by will.

One tract, two estates: the surface and the minerals. They can be owned by different people.

The five rights often used to describe the mineral estate: develop, lease (the executive right), bonus, delay rentals, and royalty. Each can be owned separately. States describe them differently.

The surface and minerals separate when a deed reserves, excepts, or conveys the minerals, or when a patent reserves them. After that, each estate has its own chain of title.

The mineral estate is dominant and the surface is servient. The mineral owner's right to use the surface, and its limits. Details vary by state.

The questions an examiner asks about every tract: whether and when the minerals were severed, whether any rights were carved out, who can lease, and who gets paid.

The parts of a typical deed: parties, granting clause, description, reservations and exceptions, habendum, warranty, and execution. The three an examiner reads most closely.

The granting clause conveys the interest. The habendum ("to have and to hold") describes the estate the grantee takes. What to do when a deed's clauses conflict: read the whole deed.

A reservation keeps something back for the grantor. An exception leaves something out of the grant. Either one can sever the minerals, and courts look at what the deed means more than the label.

A mineral deed conveys the mineral estate. A royalty deed conveys only a share of production revenue. Deeds that mix the two words are read differently from state to state.

Metes and bounds, the rectangular survey (township, range, section), and lot and block. How to find the tract on a map.

Why deeds are recorded, what constructive notice means, and how recording protects a later buyer. The type of recording act varies by state.

A lease conveys the right to explore for and produce minerals. The lessee takes the working interest; the lessor keeps a royalty and gets the minerals back when the lease ends. States label the lessee's interest differently.

The primary term is a fixed period. If there is production when it ends, the lease continues into the secondary term for as long as production continues (held by production).

The three payments under a lease: bonus at signing, delay rentals during the primary term (most modern leases are paid-up), and royalty on production.

Pooling, Pugh, shut-in royalty, continuous development, force majeure and other savings clauses. An examiner reads them to decide whether a lease is still alive, and over how much land.

A lease ends by expiration, cessation of production, or release. Terminations often don't appear in the records, which is one reason top leases exist.

When the minerals are split among many owners, each owner leases their own share. Unleased interests, the proportionate reduction (lesser interest) clause, and ratification.

Gross acres measure the tract. Net mineral acres measure your share of the minerals, expressed in acres.

Fraction of the minerals owned × gross acres = NMA. Following a chain of conveyances, and why "of the minerals" and "of my interest" give different answers.

Working interest is the lessee's cost-bearing share; the operator is usually one of several working interest owners. Net revenue interest is a decimal share of production revenue. The royalty owner's formula: NMA ÷ unit acres × royalty.

An overriding royalty is carved out of the lease and burdens the working interest. An NPRI is carved out of the mineral estate and burdens the mineral owner's royalty. How burdens stack.

When tracts are pooled into one unit, each owner's share is based on the acres their tract contributes. The formula is the same: NMA in the unit divided by unit acres, times the royalty.

Three worked examples with every step shown: one owner and one tract, an inherited fraction, and a tract only partly inside the unit.

What a division order is, where its decimal comes from, and why to check the decimal before signing.

The request: find out who owns the minerals under a section. What each earlier topic contributes, and the habits of an examiner.

Tracing back to the original grant from the government, then running forward through every instrument that moves title (deeds, wills, probate orders, leases), each linked to the one before it.

What an abstract of title is, how to search county records by grantor/grantee index or tract index, and the limits of online records.

The examiner's chronological log of the chain: each instrument, what it did to ownership, and a total that must come to exactly 1.

Unprobated estates, name variances, unreleased leases and liens, and broken chains, with the usual cure for each.

How a title opinion states ownership and lists requirements: what the record shows, why it is a defect, and what will cure it before drilling or payment.