Indiana is the state where the Supreme Court said a severed mineral interest can simply expire. Twenty years without use, no notice required, and the minerals revert to the surface. If your family owns under Posey, Gibson, or Knox County and nobody has filed anything since the 1990s, read this before you read anything else.
Indiana is the Illinois Basin's eastern shoulder: the same shallow sands and limestones that produce in White County, Illinois, continue under Posey, Gibson, and Vanderburgh, in more than 900 reservoirs and about 500 named fields, nearly all of them vertical, most of them old, and almost all of them paying small royalties to families who have held the interest since the Griffin discovery in 1938.
Berlin buys Indiana minerals and royalties across the basin counties, producing and non-producing, including the fractional interests and the hundred-dollar checks the large buyers will not look at. We also check the one thing that matters more in Indiana than anywhere else before we quote a number: whether the interest still exists.
Indiana Code 32-23-10 is the strictest dormant mineral law in the country and the one the U.S. Supreme Court chose to bless. A severed mineral interest unused for 20 years is extinguished and reverts to the surface owner, with no notice required before the lapse. Texaco v. Short, 454 U.S. 516 (1982), upheld it five to four.
Use is defined in the statute: actual production, injection or storage operations, payment of rentals or royalties, use on a pooled or unitized tract, payment of taxes on the interest, or a recorded statement of claim under Indiana Code 32-23-10-4 naming the owner, the owner's address, and the land. The statement must be filed with the county recorder before the 20 years run, and filing counts as use from that date. The recorder keeps a separate dormant mineral interest record. A successor who claims the lapse publishes notice in the county paper and mails it within ten days if an address is known; an owner of ten or more interests in the county who missed by inadvertence then has 60 days to file. The right cannot be waived in advance.
What this means for an heir: if the interest has not produced, been leased, paid taxes, or had a statement of claim recorded since the 1990s, it may already belong to the surface owner. If it has not reached 20 years, a one-page filing with the recorder saves it. We check the dormant mineral record in every Indiana purchase, and we will tell you what we find whether or not you sell.
Southwest Indiana. The Griffin Consolidated field, discovered in Gibson County in 1938, covers about 25 square miles of Gibson and Posey counties and had produced more than 84 million barrels by 2003. Welborn Consolidated and West Hovey in Posey and Warrenton East in Gibson and Vanderburgh are the other large fields. Reservoirs sit at 1,000 to 3,000 feet in Pennsylvanian sands and the Mississippian Degonia, Clore, Palestine, Waltersburg, Tar Springs, Hardinsburg, Big Clifty, Cypress, Aux Vases, Ste. Genevieve, Salem, and St. Louis.
The state produced about 1.3 million barrels of oil and 2.9 billion cubic feet of gas in 2025, and 306,000 barrels in the first quarter of 2026. Every permit is vertical. Campbell Energy's 32-well Fort Payne program in Griffin Consolidated in Posey County is the kind of drilling that still happens here: methodical, shallow, and productive for decades.
The Trenton Formation in east central Indiana is history now, but it is history that shows up in title. Gas was discovered near Eaton in 1886 and oil near Keystone in 1889, the boom peaked in 1904, and Trenton leases and mineral reservations from that era still sit in the chain under 21 counties.
A small severance tax. Indiana Code 6-8-1-8: the greater of 1 percent of value or 24 cents a barrel and 3 cents per Mcf, taken before your royalty is calculated.
No payment statute for private leases. Indiana sets no deadline and no late-payment interest on private royalties; the lease governs. Get a payment clause into any lease you sign.
Unclaimed property after three years. Mineral proceeds unpaid for three years go to the Indiana Attorney General's unclaimed property program. Search it under every spelling of the family name; see unclaimed royalties.
A real heirship affidavit. Indiana Code 29-1-7-23 lets anyone record an affidavit of the decedent's death, the vesting instruments, and the distributees, which is prima facie evidence of the transfer and, after seven months with no estate opened, evidence the property is free of estate debts. It moves more inherited Indiana minerals than probate does. A transfer on death deed under Indiana Code 32-17-14 avoids the question for the next generation.
Indiana has had no inheritance tax since 2013.
Indiana adopted permanent carbon sequestration rules in July 2025, the EPA approved Wabash Carbon Services' two Class VI permits in Vigo and Vermillion counties in 2024, and Vault 44.01 and Cardinal Ethanol received a final Class VI permit for Randolph County in April 2026. Shakespeare Sequestration drilled stratigraphic test wells in Shelby, Jay, and Putnam counties in 2025 and 2026. Storage is a pore space question, not a mineral one, but if your minerals sit under a proposed footprint you will be mapped. Our pore space and carbon storage page explains the owner's position.
Producing interests are priced off the actual checks and the field's slow decline; a Griffin royalty that has paid since the Truman administration is a durable asset and should be valued as one, not as a formula applied to a county average. Non-producing acreage carries value where permits are landing, which in Indiana means Posey and Gibson, and little elsewhere, and we will say which. Because Indiana publishes no lease-level production, your division orders and check stubs are the record. Text a photo of a stub to 918-984-1645 and you will have a written number within two business days, with the dormant mineral check done first.
Sandstone and limestone reservoirs at 1,000 to 3,000 feet across the southwest counties: Pennsylvanian sands, then the Mississippian Degonia, Clore, Palestine, Waltersburg, Tar Springs, Hardinsburg, Big Clifty, Cypress, Aux Vases, Ste. Genevieve, Salem, and St. Louis. More than 900 reservoirs in about 500 fields.
Discovered in 1938 in Gibson County, the field that opened southwest Indiana: about 25 square miles across Gibson and Posey counties and more than 84 million barrels produced. Still being drilled, including Campbell Energy's 32-well vertical Fort Payne program.
The Ordovician limestone that made east central Indiana a gas boom state in the 1880s and 1890s, discovered near Eaton in 1886, oil near Keystone in 1889, peaked in 1904. Mostly history now, but Trenton leases and reservations still turn up in title across 21 counties.
Small coalbed methane programs in Vigo and Gibson counties, the one place in Indiana where new gas permits still show up.
Posey and Gibson carry most of the state's production and nearly all of its new permits. Indiana does not publish county-level production, so these are the counties where the wells and the permits are. We buy in every producing Indiana county.
Whether you need a probate, the affidavit and transfer on death routes, the dormant mineral rules, and where unpaid royalties go: inherited mineral rights in Indiana, what heirs should do.
What Indiana mineral rights are worth, information only, with this month's activity. Unclaimed Indiana royalties: where the money goes and how an heir claims it.
Everything a Indiana owner needs in one place: who owns what under state law, how royalties must be paid and by when, what a buyer can and cannot deduct, the tax treatment of a sale, and the deadlines that quietly cost people their minerals. Free, and no sign-up.
Read the Indiana guideThe things owners here most often wish they had read first. All free, none of it gated.
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Prefer the phone? Call or text 918-984-1645 and you will get Stephen, the owner, not a call center. If we miss you, we text back the same day.
In a hurry? Text a photo of a royalty check stub to 918-984-1645 and our preliminary offer puts a written number in front of you within about two business days. It holds for 7 while you decide.