Somebody else signs the lease that governs your minerals. They pick the royalty, the bonus and the term, and you are bound by it. Here is what that person owes you, what you can do about it, and what your interest is worth when the leasing decision is not yours.
A mineral estate is not a single thing. It is a bundle of separable rights, and the Texas Supreme Court listed them in Altman v. Blake, 712 S.W.2d 117 (Tex. 1986):
The executive right is the second stick: the power to sign an oil and gas lease that binds the whole mineral estate, including the interests of people who do not hold it. It can be carved off and held separately from everything else, usually by a deed, a reservation, or a will.
When it is carved off, what is left is a non-executive mineral interest. Altman held that "a mineral interest shorn of the executive right and the right to receive delay rentals remains an interest in the mineral fee." You still own minerals. You just cannot lease them.
The label tells you less than you think. "Non-executive mineral interest" tells you only that the leasing stick was stripped. Whether you still receive bonus, or delay rentals, depends entirely on the wording of the instrument that split the estate. Anyone who tells you a non-executive always receives bonus is guessing. Read the deed.
These two get confused constantly, including by people who should know better, and the difference matters most at exactly the moment it is hardest to fix.
| Non-executive mineral interest | Non-participating royalty (NPRI) | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Still a mineral fee interest | A royalty carved out of the minerals |
| Can sign a lease | No | No |
| Bonus and delay rentals | Depends on the instrument | No, by definition |
| Royalty | Yes | Yes |
| Bears drilling costs | No | No |
| When the lease expires | You own unleased minerals again | You still own only a royalty |
That last row is the whole difference. When a lease dies, a non-executive mineral owner is back to owning minerals, and in most cases the executive right that burdened them has to be exercised again for a new lease. A perpetual NPRI owner never gets leasing control at any point, ever. Two interests that look identical on a royalty check behave completely differently over thirty years.
If what you hold is a royalty rather than a mineral interest, the fuller treatment is on the non-participating royalty interest page, including the fixed versus floating problem.
Texas has the most developed law in the country on this, built case by case over forty years. The short version is that the executive owes the non-executive a duty of utmost good faith and fair dealing, and the question a court actually asks is whether the executive engaged in self-dealing that unfairly diminished the value of the non-executive interest.
Manges v. Guerra, 673 S.W.2d 180 (Tex. 1984). The executive leased 25,911 acres to himself for a $5 bonus. The court imposed a duty requiring the executive to "acquire for the non-executive every benefit that he exacts for himself," cancelled the lease, and affirmed $382,608.79 in actual and $500,000 in exemplary damages.
In re Bass, 113 S.W.3d 735 (Tex. 2003). Bass refused to lease 20,000 acres burdened by a royalty interest. The court held there was no breach absent an executed lease: because the executive "has not acquired any benefits for himself, through executing a lease, no duty has been breached." For eight years, simply refusing to lease was effectively immune.
Lesley v. Veterans Land Board, 352 S.W.3d 479 (Tex. 2011). Narrowed Bass. A developer holding the executive right imposed restrictive covenants barring mineral development on land it was selling as home sites. The court held that "if the refusal is arbitrary or motivated by self-interest to the non-executive's detriment, the executive may have breached his duty," and cancelled the covenants.
KCM Financial LLC v. Bradshaw, 457 S.W.3d 70 (Tex. 2015). The best teaching case for royalty owners. The executive took a lease at a below-market 1/8 royalty when 1/4 was available in the area, while capturing an above-market bonus that it kept entirely for itself. Because the NPRI owner shares in royalty but not bonus, trading royalty down for bonus moves money directly from the non-executive to the executive. The court said the duty "prohibits self dealing but does not require the executive to subjugate its interests to those of the non-executive," and declined to draw a bright line.
Texas Outfitters Ltd., LLC v. Nicholson, 572 S.W.3d 647 (Tex. 2019). The current word. The executive refused an offer of $1,750 per acre bonus and 25% royalty in order to protect its own hunting and surface business, then sold the ranch with an unencumbered surface. Breach affirmed, with $867,654.32 in lost bonus plus interest. The court applied the self-dealing test to refusals as well as to signed leases, and again refused a bright-line rule: "We certainly do not hold that an executive must always accept an offer. But we also do not hold that an executive is never required to accept such an offer."
You will read online that "the executive is a fiduciary." Manges used that word, but KCM and Texas Outfitters describe something narrower: a duty that bars self-dealing but does not require the executive to put your interests ahead of its own. The executive is allowed to act in its own interest. It is not allowed to enrich itself at your expense. That is a real distinction, and it decides cases.
We looked for an Oklahoma Supreme Court decision setting out the duty an executive owes a non-executive, and did not find one. Multi-state surveys of the executive right routinely cover Texas, Colorado, Louisiana, Wyoming and Mississippi without mentioning Oklahoma at all.
Oklahoma does have related authority. Melton v. Sneed, 1940 OK 462, 188 Okla. 388, 109 P.2d 509, describes a mineral interest as including "the right to join in any lease thereafter made, and the right to demand and receive" a share of "the bonus, rents, and royalties thereunder." And Stroud v. D-X Sunray Oil Co., 1962 OK 240, 376 P.2d 1015, held that reserving "executive rights to lease and to take rentals and bonuses" does not by itself show an intent to pool a non-participating owner's royalty. But that is a case about pooling intent, not about a standard of conduct.
What this means practically: an Oklahoma non-executive should not assume the Manges and Texas Outfitters protections apply. Your practical protection comes from two other places, the wording of the instrument that split the estate, and the Corporation Commission's forced pooling process. If you believe an Oklahoma executive has dealt with you unfairly, that is a question for an Oklahoma oil and gas attorney, and it is not a settled area.
In Texas, the Mineral Interest Pooling Act limits applicants to mineral and working interest owners and unleased tract owners under Tex. Nat. Res. Code § 102.012. A royalty owner cannot apply. In Oklahoma, pooling under 52 O.S. § 87.1 runs to those who can lease or participate; under § 87.1(e) an unleased mineral owner "shall be regarded as a lessee to the extent of a seven-eighths (7/8) interest," and royalty owners share in production according to their interest rather than by applying.
This is the single most actionable item on this page if you are in Texas. Under Montgomery v. Rittersbacher, 424 S.W.2d 210 (Tex. 1968), "pooling on the part of the holder of the executive rights cannot be binding upon the non-participating royalty owner in the absence of his consent."
Read that twice. If you hold a non-participating royalty and the executive pooled your acreage into a unit, you are not automatically in that unit. You may ratify it, and ratification can be implied by conduct, including by accepting royalties on a unit basis or by signing a division order that recites the unit.
Whether you want to be in the unit depends entirely on where the well is. If the well is on your tract, staying out of the unit may pay you far more. If the well is three tracts away, ratifying may be the only way you get paid at all. That is a decision worth making deliberately rather than by cashing a check. There is more on how this happens by accident on the division order page.
This section is market practice rather than law, and we will say so plainly.
Non-executive interests are harder to sell and generally trade at a discount to an equivalent interest that carries the executive right. The reason is simple and not really about you: a buyer is acquiring an asset whose income depends on a decision somebody else makes. A buyer who owns the executive right can go get a lease. A buyer who does not has to wait and hope.
NPRIs are usually discounted more heavily than non-executive mineral interests, because a non-executive mineral interest returns to leasable mineral status when the lease expires, and a perpetual NPRI never does.
What a serious buyer will ask you for:
If a buyer makes you an offer without asking for the severing instrument, they are pricing a guess. That is not automatically a low offer, but it is an uninformed one, and it is worth asking what they assumed.
The word people use for their interest is right about half the time. We will pull the recorded instrument, tell you whether you hold minerals or a royalty, whether the executive right went with it, who holds that right now, and what we think the interest is worth. Free, no obligation, and no mailing list.
Get a Free Valuation Ask a LandmanCase citations are to Texas law as of August 2026, and the Texas line from Manges through Texas Outfitters does not automatically apply outside Texas. We were not able to locate an Oklahoma Supreme Court decision setting an executive duty standard, and we have said so on this page rather than borrowing Texas law to fill the gap. Berlin Royalties is a mineral buyer and a landman shop in Tulsa, not a law firm, and this page is general information rather than legal advice about your instrument. If the duty question involves real money, hire a lawyer in the state where the minerals sit.