A landman called, or a lease offer landed in your mailbox, and suddenly you need to know what's under your land and who owns it. Here's the straight version — what severed minerals are, how to find out what you own, and the traps in that offer.
In most states, land is really two properties stacked on top of each other: the surface estate (dirt, timber, house) and the mineral estate (oil, gas, coal, aggregates, everything down to the center of the earth). A past owner can have sold or reserved the minerals decades ago — that's a severed mineral estate — and the deed you signed at closing may say nothing about it. In most states the mineral estate is dominant: whoever owns it generally has the right to reasonable use of your surface to get their minerals out. That single sentence is why this page exists.
Answer honestly; your action list builds itself below.
Permits, rigs, or quarries within a few miles matter more than anything. Minerals with no development interest have option value, not income value.
Shale gas, coal, limestone, sand — each has its own market, depth, and buyer universe. "Minerals" is not one price.
Owning 100% of minerals under 80 acres is a different conversation than 1/16th under 5 acres inherited through four estates.
Whoever holds the right to LEASE controls the deal — sometimes that right was severed separately from the royalty. Check.
Verify before you negotiate: your action list from the worksheet above is the deed-room work — most county records are searchable online now, and a local abstractor can run a mineral chain for a few hundred dollars. Then, if there's a real offer on the table, spend real money on review: an oil-and-gas attorney for lease terms, and independent technical eyes on what the minerals are actually worth. ShotRock does the technical side — what's under the tract, who's active nearby, and what the honest value range looks like — start a conversation. We don't buy minerals and we don't broker deals, which is exactly why our number is worth having.
Educational content, not legal advice — mineral law is state-specific and occasionally medieval. For lease execution, hire a licensed attorney in your state.