Carbon storage leasing is moving quickly now that Texas and Louisiana control their own permitting. Mineral owners are being approached about it. We are going to tell you something most people in this business will not: if your minerals are severed from the surface, that money is probably not yours.
Pore space is the empty volume between grains of rock underground. It is what holds oil, gas and water, and it is what a carbon storage project needs. For most of American legal history nobody had to decide who owned it, because it had no independent value. That changed.
In Myers-Woodward, LLC v. Underground Services Markham, LLC, decided in 2025, the Supreme Court of Texas held that the surface owner owns the subsurface pore space, not the mineral owner, absent an agreement saying otherwise.
The court also rejected a broader argument worth understanding. The mineral estate in Texas is dominant, meaning a mineral owner may use as much of the surface as is reasonably necessary to produce the minerals. The court declined to stretch that dominance to cover storing substances unrelated to the mineral owner's own production. Being dominant lets you get your minerals out. It does not let you rent the empty space to someone else.
The court was careful to add that not all mineral estates are created equal, and that any dispute starts with the specific words of the specific deed rather than with a general rule. That caveat matters more than it sounds, and we come back to it below.
Two regulatory changes moved carbon storage from theory to leasing:
The practical consequence is that land agents are now approaching landowners across the Gulf Coast, East Texas, Louisiana and the northern plains about pore space leases, and many of the people receiving those approaches own minerals and assume the offer relates to them.
The pore space is yours to lease. Negotiate it as you would any other subsurface agreement: term, payment structure, the specific formations included, what happens on a transfer, and what happens at the end of injection.
Under the Texas rule, the pore space is not yours, and a carbon storage payment will generally go to the surface owner. That is a hard thing to be told, and we would rather tell you before you spend money on a lawyer than after.
What you do still hold is a genuine interest in not having your minerals impaired. A storage project occupies rock. If a project would sterilize a formation you could otherwise produce, or interfere with existing production, that is a real conflict and it is worth having a lawyer look at your deed.
The pore space is generally yours. Expect the storage operator to seek accommodation or waivers from the mineral owner, because the dominant mineral estate can still complicate a project.
1. Your actual deed language. The Texas Supreme Court said explicitly that these disputes begin with the instrument, not with the default rule. Older conveyances sometimes reserve or grant rights in language that predates anyone thinking about storage, and how those words land is not something to guess at.
2. The 45Q recapture question. The tax credit can be recaptured if stored carbon dioxide later escapes. Practitioners have flagged that mineral activity in or near a storage complex is one route to that happening, which means storage operators have a strong interest in restricting drilling nearby. If you are asked to sign anything that limits future mineral development, that is not a formality. It may be the most valuable thing in the document, and it should be priced.
We are a landman shop. We can pull your chain of title and tell you what you own, whether the surface and minerals were severed, and when. That is genuinely useful and we will do it free, whether or not you ever sell us anything.
We are not a law firm, and pore space law is unsettled across most states. Texas has now answered the default question. Many states have not, several have statutes that answer it differently, and North Dakota and Wyoming took legislative routes years ago. If real money is on the table, hire a lawyer in your state.
What we will not do is pretend a carbon storage offer makes your minerals more valuable when it does not, or use the confusion to buy something cheaply.
We will tell you whether you own the surface, the minerals, or both, whether the estates were severed and when, and what the document in front of you is actually asking for. Free, and no obligation of any kind.
Ask a Landman Get a Free ValuationCase law current as of August 2026. Myers-Woodward, LLC v. Underground Services Markham, LLC was decided by the Supreme Court of Texas in 2025. Texas received Class VI primacy from the EPA in November 2025; Louisiana received it in 2024. 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. Pore space and carbon storage law varies significantly by state and is unsettled in many of them.