Sell your Colorado mineral rights and royalties.

Colorado is a state where the law is unusually good to royalty owners and the regulatory environment is unusually hard on development. Both matter to what your interest is worth, and neither is explained anywhere in the results you get when you search for how to sell Colorado minerals, which is currently led by a listings directory.

Berlin buys Colorado minerals and royalties, concentrated in the DJ Basin under Weld County and the northern front range, with interest in the Piceance and southern Colorado as well.

Colorado is a first marketable product state

In Rogers v. Westerman Farm Co., 29 P.3d 887 (Colo. 2001), the Colorado Supreme Court adopted the first marketable product rule: the lessee bears the cost of getting the gas into a marketable condition. Clough v. Williams Production RMT Co., 179 P.3d 32 (Colo. App. 2007), follows it.

Practically, the costs of making gas saleable, gathering and dehydration and compression, fall on the operator rather than on you, subject to what your lease expressly says.

That places Colorado alongside Wyoming, which reaches a similar result by statute, and West Virginia, and squarely against North Dakota, Kansas, and Pennsylvania. If you own in more than one of these states you own assets that behave differently, and a single blended multiple applied across all of them is not underwriting.

If your Colorado check shows gathering or compression deductions, ask. Our royalty statement decoder explains the line items and our letter templates include a certified mail demand for an itemized accounting.

SB 19-181 and what it did to the calculus

Senate Bill 19-181, enacted in 2019, is the most consequential change to Colorado oil and gas law in a generation. Three provisions matter to a mineral owner.

The mission changed. Section 6 rewrote the Oil and Gas Conservation Act's declaration from fostering development to regulating development to protect public health, safety, welfare, and the environment. The agency itself was later renamed the Energy and Carbon Management Commission, or ECMC.

Pooling got harder for operators, which means leverage for you. Section 14 requires that owners of more than 45 percent of the mineral interests to be pooled must have joined in the pooling application before the commission may force pool the remainder. Previously a single owner could initiate a forced pooling. In a fragmented unit, a group of unleased owners now has genuine negotiating position that did not exist before 2019.

Local governments got real authority. Section 4 gave local governments power to regulate siting, inspect facilities, impose fines, and charge fees, and Section 17 confirmed that local requirements may be stricter than the state's. Practically, a tract in a municipality with a hostile posture and a tract in unincorporated Weld County are not the same asset even if the geology is identical.

For valuation, the honest summary is: Colorado development timelines are longer and less certain than they were, which discounts undeveloped acreage, while producing interests are unaffected and Colorado's deduction rule protects the check. A buyer who quotes you a Colorado number without knowing which municipality you are in has not done the work.

Taxes, including the two Colorado surprises

Severance tax is graduated on gross income: 2.0 percent under $25,000; 3.0 percent from $25,000 to $100,000; 4.0 percent from $100,000 to $300,000; and 5.0 percent at $300,000 and above, C.R.S. section 39-29-105(1)(b).

The headline rate overstates the burden badly. There is a large ad valorem credit for property taxes assessed on production, and a stripper exemption for oil wells under 15 barrels per day and gas wells under 90 Mcf per day. Colorado Legislative Council Staff calculated that the effective severance rate averaged about 1.6 percent from 2013 through 2022, ranging from 0.3 percent to 2.5 percent. The ad valorem credit percentage has been changing, and the calculation method changed again beginning in 2026, so verify current treatment.

SB24-230 production fees are new and separate from severance tax, with a Clean Transit component and a Wildlife and Land component, and rates are reset quarterly. Do not rely on a fixed number from any source, including this page. Check the Colorado Department of Revenue's posted rates.

Nonresident withholding: 2 percent of the sales price when a nonresident sells Colorado real property over $100,000, C.R.S. section 39-22-604.5. This applies to mineral conveyances. Colorado's individual income tax is a flat 4.40 percent.

Compare Wyoming next door, which has no income tax and no withholding at all. For an out of state seller with interests in both, the after tax difference is real. See taxes when you sell mineral rights.

The severed mineral disclosure statute

Colorado requires title insurers to give written notice in title commitments when recorded evidence shows a severed mineral estate, including notice that the mineral estate may include the right to enter and use the property without the surface owner's permission. C.R.S. section 10-11-123.

That is unusual and it is worth knowing for two reasons. It means Colorado surface transactions routinely surface the existence of severed minerals, which is how a lot of Colorado families first learn they own something. And it means the mineral estate's dominance is expressly acknowledged in state law, which matters in surface use negotiations.

We also found no Colorado dormant mineral act. Unlike Kansas, North Dakota, and Ohio, a severed Colorado mineral interest does not appear to lapse for nonuse. Unpaid royalty proceeds are a separate question and are reachable under Colorado's unclaimed property act at C.R.S. section 38-13-209. See unclaimed royalties.

What actually moves a Colorado interest's value

• Core versus outer DJ. Weld County core Niobrara and the basin edge are different assets by a wide margin.
• Codell inventory. Where Codell is productive and co-developed, an interest carries meaningfully more remaining locations than the Niobrara alone would suggest.
• Municipality and surface constraints. Post SB 19-181, permitting reality is a valuation input, not a footnote.
• Whether the acreage is already in a producing unit. Undeveloped acreage in Colorado carries more timing risk than it does in Texas or Oklahoma.
• Operator. Chevron by way of its acquisition of PDC, Civitas, Occidental, and Prospect all operate in the DJ with different development paces. Our Colorado operator lookup is refreshed weekly from the ECMC active operator list.

Statutes and primary sources

• First marketable product rule: Rogers v. Westerman Farm Co., 29 P.3d 887 (Colo. 2001); Clough v. Williams Production RMT Co., 179 P.3d 32 (Colo. App. 2007)
• SB 19-181, Colorado General Assembly
• Severance tax, C.R.S. section 39-29-105; effective rate analysis from Colorado Legislative Council Staff
• SB24-230 production fee rates, updated quarterly at the Colorado Department of Revenue
• Nonresident withholding, C.R.S. section 39-22-604.5
• Severed mineral estate disclosure, C.R.S. section 10-11-123
• Energy and Carbon Management Commission (ECMC), formerly COGCC: ecmc.colorado.gov. See our well records by state page.
• Land records are held by county clerks and recorders. Colorado has no statewide official portal.

Last reviewed August 2026. Colorado severance tax methodology changed for 2026 and SB24-230 fees reset quarterly. Berlin Royalties is a mineral buyer and a landman shop, not a law firm or a tax advisor, and this page is general information rather than advice about your interest.

Where to start

Also see our DJ Basin and Niobrara page for how the Colorado and Wyoming sides of the same basin differ.

Send a check stub, a lease, a deed, or a legal description. We will run the ECMC records and the county records, tell you what you own, tell you what has been permitted and what the local permitting picture looks like, and give you a number with the reasoning shown. Free, no obligation, and we will tell you if holding is the better call.