Michigan is the one state where the legislature overruled its own supreme court to protect royalty owners, and the one state in the Great Lakes where minerals can be lost outright for sitting still for twenty years. Both facts are worth money, and most owners know neither.
Michigan is a genuinely unusual mineral state, and the two things that make it unusual point in opposite directions. Its royalty owners have the strongest statutory protection against deductions of almost anywhere in the country. Its mineral owners also face the most straightforward way in the region to lose their minerals entirely.
Berlin buys Michigan minerals and royalties, including the small Antrim interests other buyers will not look at.
We want to be direct about this because it is the single most consequential fact for a Michigan mineral owner, and because you will find pages online that say Michigan has no dormant mineral act. That is incorrect.
The Michigan Dormant Minerals Act, MCL 554.291 et seq., was enacted in 1963. It works like this.
An interest in oil or gas owned by someone other than the surface owner is deemed abandoned if, for 20 years, it was not sold, leased, mortgaged, or transferred by an instrument recorded with the register of deeds, and during that same period none of the following occurred:
If the interest is abandoned, it vests in the surface owner "in keeping with the character of the surface ownership." The Michigan Supreme Court upheld the statute against constitutional challenge in Van Slooten v. Larsen, 410 Mich. 21, 299 N.W.2d 704 (1980).
Three scope points that matter:
Non-participating royalty interests are exposed too. An NPRI in Michigan runs the same 20-year risk and should be preserved the same way.
Record a claim of interest, sometimes called a notice of intent to preserve, at least once every 20 years with the register of deeds in the county where the land sits. The affidavit describes the land and the interest claimed, gives your name and address, and states your intention not to abandon.
Recording it does one more thing worth knowing: under MCL 554.291(3) it also protects the severed interest from being wiped out in a foreclosure for the surface owner's unpaid property taxes. That is a risk most severed owners have never considered.
Michigan is a Uniform Probate Code state and probate here is not usually difficult. But the Dormant Minerals Act changes what delay costs.
A mineral interest sitting in a deceased person's name for 20 years, with no recorded instrument, no drilling permit, no production, and no storage use, is abandoned. In most states an unprobated estate is an inconvenience that a buyer or a court can clean up later. In Michigan it is a mechanism of loss. Recording a claim of interest while the estate is being sorted out is cheap insurance. See selling inherited minerals before probate is done.
In Schroeder v. Terra Energy, Ltd., 565 N.W.2d 887 (Mich. 1997), the Michigan Supreme Court held that under a lease valuing royalty "at the wellhead," a producer could deduct all post production costs.
Three years later the legislature overruled it. MCL 324.61503b, effective March 28, 2000, is one of only a handful of statutes in the country that answers the post production question directly rather than leaving it to case law, and it is strongly owner-favorable.
| Lease entered into as lessee before March 28, 2000 | Lease entered into as lessee after March 28, 2000 | |
|---|---|---|
| Governing rule | Schroeder, at the wellhead | MCL 324.61503b |
| Default if the lease is silent | Deductions allowed | No deductions |
| If the lease expressly allows deductions | Deductions allowed | Only removal of CO₂, H₂S, nitrogen, or other constituents other than water, and specified transportation costs, unless the lease explicitly provides for other items |
| Charging costs from another unit | Not addressed | Prohibited under § 61503b(2) |
| Remedy for wrongful deduction | Contract | Amount wrongly deducted plus reasonable attorney fees under § 61503c |
Check your lease date before you do anything else. It is the single fact that decides whether your check should have deductions on it at all. Our royalty statement decoder explains the lines, and our free letter templates include a certified mail demand for an itemized accounting.
The attorney fee provision at § 61503c is the part that matters practically. Most royalty deduction disputes are not worth litigating because the fees exceed the recovery. Michigan removed that problem for post-2000 leases.
Severance tax, under the Michigan Severance Tax Act, MCL 205.301:
| Resource | Rate |
|---|---|
| Oil and condensate | 6.6% of gross cash market value |
| Marginal or stripper oil well | 4% |
| Gas, NGLs, condensate | 5% |
On top of that, an oil and gas surveillance fee under MCL 324.61524 of up to 1 percent of gross cash market value, collected with the severance tax. It has been 1.00 percent in 2026, 2025, 2022 and 2023, and 0.74 percent in 2024. Michigan also imposes county ad valorem property tax on producing minerals. Returns are due monthly by the 25th.
Income tax on a sale: flat 4.25 percent, and Michigan sources gain on the sale of real property to the state where the property is located. A nonresident selling Michigan minerals files Form MI-1040-NR and pays Michigan tax on the gain. There is no withholding at closing, so nothing is held back from your proceeds. Some Michigan cities levy local income taxes. See taxes when you sell mineral rights.
The regulator is EGLE, the Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy, through its Geologic Resources Management Division, administering Part 615, Supervisor of Wells, of NREPA. Roughly 60,000 oil and gas wells have been drilled in the state.
One trap worth naming: Michigan's Wellogic system covers water wells, not oil and gas. Owners land there constantly and conclude their wells do not exist.
Land records are county by county, with the Register of Deeds in each of 83 counties. There is no statewide portal. Our well records by state page links the searches.
Antrim and Niagaran interests are exactly the kind of asset large buyers skip: small monthly checks, very long lives, and title that frequently runs back through several unprobated estates. The cost of running title and recording a deed is the same whether an interest is worth two thousand dollars or two hundred thousand, so most buyers simply do not respond, and owners read that as evidence of no value.
We run our own title, we have no minimum, and we pay all closing costs. If money is sitting in operator suspense or with Michigan unclaimed property, we will tell you how to claim it and you keep it, whether or not you sell anything to us. Michigan's unclaimed property regime covers mineral proceeds specifically. See small mineral interests and unclaimed royalties.
Send a royalty stub, a deed, or just the county and operator name. We will identify what you own, check your lease date against the March 2000 line, tell you whether your dormancy clock is a problem, and value the interest with the reasoning shown. Free, and if keeping it is the right answer we will say so.
Last reviewed August 2026. Rates and fees change annually and the surveillance fee is set each year. Berlin Royalties is a mineral buyer and a landman shop in Tulsa, not a law firm or a tax advisor, and this page is general information rather than advice about your interest. If your dormancy clock may have run, talk to a Michigan title attorney rather than waiting.
Shallow biogenic gas across the northern Lower Peninsula, one of the country's first big shale gas plays and famously long-lived. Thousands of small, very durable royalty interests.
Pinnacle reef oil and gas fields drilled since the 1970s across the reef trend. Long-lived, well understood, and straightforward to value once you have the well data.
The deeper play behind Michigan's historic fields, including the giant Albion-Scipio trend.
Michigan holds more natural gas storage capacity than any other state. Storage use is one of the three things that stops the dormancy clock, which makes it directly relevant to whether you still own what you think you own.
The Antrim runs across the northern Lower Peninsula; the Albion-Scipio trend runs through the south. We review every Michigan inquiry and buy well beyond the counties listed.
Everything a Michigan 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 Michigan guideThe things owners here most often wish they had read first. All free, none of it gated.
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