Surface Rights
Ownership of the land surface — buildings, crops, and soil — separate from the minerals beneath, which can be owned by someone else.
Surface rights are the ownership of the land you can see and use: the soil, buildings, crops, water at the surface, and the right to occupy the tract. In many oil and gas states the surface and the minerals are owned separately, an arrangement called a severed mineral estate.
In most states the mineral estate is dominant, meaning the mineral owner or lessee has a legal right to use as much of the surface as reasonably necessary to develop the minerals — building pads, roads, and pipelines. Surface owners are typically owed accommodation and, in many cases, surface-damage compensation negotiated in a surface use agreement.
Buyers chasing minerals should not assume surface ownership comes with them, and vice versa. A surface and mineral question like this is worth running past an oil and gas attorney. Start with our overview.