# Sell Texas Mineral Rights | Permian, Eagle Ford, Haynesville | Berlin Royalties

> Sell Texas mineral rights and royalties. Fasken v. Puig on cost free royalty language, Van Dyke and the estate misconception doctrine, the Mineral Interest Pooling Act, no dormant mineral act, and no state income tax.

Source: https://www.berlinroyalties.com/texas/
Publisher: Berlin Royalties, a veteran-owned oil and gas mineral and royalty buyer in Tulsa, Oklahoma, buying for its own account since 2014. Call or text 918-984-1645.
License: free to quote and cite with attribution to Berlin Royalties and a link to the source URL.

Where We Buy · Texas

## Sell your Texas mineral rights and royalties.

In April 2026 the Texas Supreme Court held that 'free of cost forever' in a royalty deed does not stop an operator deducting post production costs. If your Texas lease or deed relies on cost free language, that decision changed what your interest is worth.

[Get a Free Valuation](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/free-valuation/)
or call or text [918-984-1645](tel:9189841645)

Texas is the biggest mineral market in the country and the noisiest: more mailers, more flippers, and more option contract games than anywhere else. It is also the state where the law moved most recently, and not in the owner's favor.

Berlin works the Anadarko Basin across the Oklahoma line daily and brings the same show the work underwriting to every Texas basin. What follows is the Texas law that actually decides what your interest is worth.

## The April 2026 decision that changed what a cost free royalty means

If you take one thing from this page, take this.

In ***Fasken Oil and Ranch, Ltd. v. Puig***, No. 24-1033 (Tex. Apr. 10, 2026), the Texas Supreme Court considered a 1960 deed reserving a royalty **"free of cost forever."** The trial court and the San Antonio Court of Appeals both held that language barred the deduction of post production costs, relying on *Chesapeake Exploration, L.L.C. v. Hyder*, 483 S.W.3d 870 (Tex. 2016).

**The Supreme Court reversed.** It held that "free of cost forever" refers only to exploration and production costs, not to the downstream costs of processing and transporting the product, and that it does "nothing to change the valuation point." The words "produced from the above described acreage" established an implied valuation point **at the wellhead**, and once royalty is valued at the wellhead, *Heritage Resources, Inc. v. NationsBank*, 939 S.W.2d 118 (Tex. 1996), permits an operator to deduct post production costs from the downstream sale price to arrive at wellhead value.

The Court distinguished *Hyder* on a narrow ground: Hyder's clause said "cost-free (except only its portion of production taxes)," and that parenthetical exception showed an intent to deviate from the general rule. The Puig deed had no such parenthetical.

**What this means practically.** "Free of cost," "cost-free," and "free of cost forever" are **no longer sufficient on their own** to bar post production deductions in Texas. To get a genuinely cost free royalty you now need one of three things: language that expressly **changes the valuation point** to the point of sale or downstream, language specifying that **costs are added back** to the royalty base, or **"price actually received"** language, which under *Hyder* moves the valuation point on its own.

A great many Texas royalty clauses were negotiated over the years on the understanding that "cost free" was a term of art meaning no post production costs. After *Fasken*, that understanding is wrong.

We read your specific instrument against this before we quote a number, and we will tell you which side of the line your language falls on. That analysis is free and it is yours whether or not you sell to us.

## The double fraction question: do you own one half or one sixteenth?

This one runs the other way and it is worth real money to families with old deeds.

In ***Van Dyke v. The Navigator Group***, 668 S.W.3d 353 (Tex. 2023), the Court construed a 1924 deed reserving "one-half of one-eighth of all minerals and mineral rights." Read arithmetically that is one sixteenth. The Court held it reserved **one half**.

The reasoning is the **estate misconception**: for decades, landowners and drafters commonly assumed the mineral estate itself was one eighth, because one eighth was the customary royalty. So when courts see a double fraction involving 1/8 in an antiquated instrument, they now begin with a **rebuttable presumption that the 1/8 refers to the entire mineral estate**, not to one eighth of it.

The presumption is rebuttable, and in ***Clifton v. Johnson*** (Tex. Mar. 13, 2026) the Court held it **was** rebutted where the deed expressly multiplied the fractions to a single product, such as "1/128 (1/16 of the usual 1/8 royalty)." Where the instrument does that arithmetic itself, the parenthetical is explanatory rather than a term of art and the stated number controls. *Clifton* also signals the presumption reaches royalty interests, not only mineral interests. Separately, in *ConocoPhillips Co. v. Hahn*, 704 S.W.3d 515 (Tex. Dec. 31, 2024), the Court held that ratifying a lease does not convert a fixed royalty to a floating one, though a stipulation of interest can.

The current rule in one sentence: **start with the Van Dyke presumption, then ask whether the instrument expressly multiplies the fractions to a single number.** If it does, the number controls. If it does not, you may own eight times what you thought.

If a family deed of yours contains a double fraction, send it to [Ask a Landman](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/ask-a-landman/). We read these free.

## Texas has essentially no forced pooling, and that is good for you

Oklahoma owners get a pooling order with a twenty day clock. Texas owners generally do not, and this is the most owner favorable structural feature of Texas mineral law.

The **Mineral Interest Pooling Act**, Tex. Nat. Res. Code chapter 102, enacted in 1965, is the only compulsory pooling mechanism in Texas and it was built to be difficult. The limits that matter:

- It applies **only to reservoirs discovered and produced after March 8, 1961**, which excludes a large share of Texas acreage outright.

- Section 102.013 provides that the Railroad Commission **shall dismiss** an application if a **fair and reasonable offer to pool voluntarily** was not made first. This is jurisdictional and it is where applications die. Section 102.015 lists four terms that are per se unreasonable, including an operator's preferential right to purchase minerals, a call or option on production, non-standard or unreasonable overhead charges, and prohibitions on non-operators questioning operations.

- Pooling must serve to prevent unnecessary wells, prevent waste, or protect correlative rights.

- **The Commission cannot act on its own motion.** A mineral interest owner has to initiate.

The practical consequence: if a Texas operator cannot get you to lease, it generally must lease around your tract, drill so as not to drain you, or leave you unleased and unbound. There is no election clock running against you. Compare [Oklahoma](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/oklahoma/), where a pooling order gives you twenty days and failing to elect generally deems you to have taken the smallest royalty and largest bonus.

That leverage is worth something, and it should be part of how you think about whether to lease, sell, or hold.

## Nothing lapses in Texas

Texas has **no dormant mineral act, no mineral lapse statute, and no marketable title act** that extinguishes severed minerals. An interest your great grandmother reserved in 1931 and nobody has touched since is still yours. That puts Texas with [Montana](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/montana/) and [Wyoming](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/wyoming/) and squarely against [Kansas](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/kansas/), [North Dakota](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/north-dakota/), and [Ohio](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/ohio/), where doing nothing for twenty years can cost you the interest.

Two honest caveats so the claim is accurate. Texas minerals can still be lost to **adverse possession**, which is difficult against a severed mineral estate because it generally requires actual production rather than surface use. And they can be lost to **tax foreclosure** where minerals are separately assessed. Separately, suspended royalty **proceeds** escheat to the Comptroller after the dormancy period, though the underlying mineral interest does not.

## Taxes: heavy on production, nothing on your sale

- **Oil: 4.6 percent** of market value, or 4.6 cents per barrel, whichever is greater. Tex. Tax Code ch. 202.

- **Natural gas: 7.5 percent** of market value. Tex. Tax Code ch. 201.

- **Condensate: 4.6 percent.**

- Incentives include the **high cost gas** reduced rate under section 201.057, which varies per well and can run as low as zero, a two year inactive well exemption, marginal well relief, and enhanced recovery provisions.

- **New in 2025: HB 3159** created a severance tax exemption for **restimulated wells**, giving up to 36 months of relief, or until the restimulation cost is recovered in tax savings, whichever comes first, with restimulation cost capped at $750,000. The well must have been inactive for at least twelve consecutive months and have produced for at least sixty months before going inactive. Effective for production from January 1, 2026, subject to Railroad Commission certification and Comptroller approval.

**And on your sale: nothing.** Texas has no state individual income tax, so there is no Texas tax on your capital gain and no withholding at closing. Compare [Colorado](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/colorado/) at 2 percent withheld on nonresident sales over $100,000, or [West Virginia](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/west-virginia/) at 2.5 percent. See [taxes when you sell mineral rights](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/mineral-rights-capital-gains-tax/).

## Abstracts and surveys, not sections

Texas is not a Public Land Survey System state. Descriptions run by **abstract number and original survey, league, or labor** rather than by section, township and range. That makes it genuinely harder for a Texas owner to research their own interest than it is for an Oklahoma owner, and it makes title work different.

We do that research free. Send a check stub, a deed, a division order, a tax notice, or just a survey name and a county, and we will run the Railroad Commission and county records and tell you what is there.

## Who owns the lithium, and who owns the produced water

Worth knowing if anyone approaches you about brine rights in East or Northeast Texas.

In ***Cactus Water Services, LLC v. COG Operating, LLC***, No. 23-0676 (Tex. June 27, 2025), the Court held that **produced water is oil and gas waste** and, absent an express reservation, a deed or lease conveying oil and gas rights conveys the produced water as part of the mineral estate. A surface owner wanting to keep it must expressly reserve it.

The holding is narrow, and Justice Busby's concurrence exists to say so. The Court addressed ownership of the **water**, not ownership of **the valuable substances dissolved in it**. Whether the mineral lessee owns the lithium is **not settled in Texas**. SB 1763 in the 2025 session would have defined brine minerals as part of the mineral estate and it died in committee. Regulation is clearer than ownership: SB 1186 confirmed Railroad Commission jurisdiction over brine mining and the RRC adopted new rules at 16 Tex. Admin. Code section 3.82, effective February 2025.

If you are being offered a brine lease in Texas, the honest position is that the ownership law is unresolved, and anyone telling you otherwise is overstating. See our [Smackover and lithium brine page](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/basins/smackover-lithium/).

## Statutes and primary sources

- *Fasken Oil and Ranch, Ltd. v. Puig*, No. 24-1033 (Tex. Apr. 10, 2026)

- *Van Dyke v. The Navigator Group*, 668 S.W.3d 353 (Tex. 2023); *Thomson v. Hoffman*, 674 S.W.3d 927 (Tex. 2023); *Clifton v. Johnson* (Tex. Mar. 13, 2026); *ConocoPhillips Co. v. Hahn*, 704 S.W.3d 515 (Tex. 2024)

- *Chesapeake Exploration, L.L.C. v. Hyder*, 483 S.W.3d 870 (Tex. 2016); *Heritage Resources, Inc. v. NationsBank*, 939 S.W.2d 118 (Tex. 1996); *Devon Energy Production Co. v. Sheppard*, 668 S.W.3d 332 (Tex. 2023); *BlueStone Natural Resources II, LLC v. Randle*, 620 S.W.3d 380 (Tex. 2021)

- *Cactus Water Services, LLC v. COG Operating, LLC*, No. 23-0676 (Tex. June 27, 2025)

- **Mineral Interest Pooling Act**, Tex. Nat. Res. Code ch. 102, especially sections 102.003, 102.011, 102.013, 102.015, and 102.052

- **Severance tax**, Tex. Tax Code chs. 201 and 202; incentives listed by the [Railroad Commission](https://www.rrc.texas.gov/oil-and-gas/publications-and-notices/texas-severance-tax-incentives/present-texas-severance-tax-incentives); rates at the [Comptroller](https://comptroller.texas.gov/taxes/natural-gas)

- **Railroad Commission of Texas**, including the public well and production search. See our [well records by state](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/well-records/) page and our free [Texas operator lookup](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/operators/texas/), refreshed weekly from the P-5 organization report.

- Land records are held by **county clerks**. Texas has no statewide official portal.

Last reviewed August 2026. Texas royalty law moved twice in 2026 and continues to develop. 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 legal advice about your deed or your lease. For a Texas royalty or title dispute, hire a Texas oil and gas attorney.

## Where to start

Send a check stub, a deed, a lease, or a survey and abstract. We will read your language against *Fasken* and *Van Dyke*, tell you what we think you own and what your deductions position is, value the interest with the reasoning shown, and tell you honestly if holding beats selling.

Basin pages: [Permian](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/texas/permian-basin/), [Delaware](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/texas/delaware-basin/), [Eagle Ford](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/texas/eagle-ford/), [Haynesville](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/texas/haynesville/), [Barnett](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/texas/barnett-shale/), [East Texas](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/texas/east-texas/), [Panhandle](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/texas-panhandle/), and the full [basin index](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/basins/).

Formations & Plays

## What produces here

### Permian Basin (Midland & Delaware)

The most valuable minerals on earth, and the most misvalued by mass mailers.

### Eagle Ford Shale

South Texas oil and condensate with a decade-plus of steady development.

### Haynesville Shale

East Texas dry gas with LNG demand behind it.

### Barnett Shale

The play that started the shale era, now a long-tail annuity.

### Granite Wash & Panhandle

The Anadarko Basin geology we work on both sides of the state line.

Counties

## Texas regions we cover

[Permian Basin](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/texas/permian-basin/)

[Delaware Basin](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/texas/delaware-basin/)

[Eagle Ford](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/texas/eagle-ford/)

[East Texas Haynesville](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/texas/haynesville/)

[Western Haynesville](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/texas/western-haynesville/)

[Barnett Shale](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/texas/barnett-shale/)

[East Texas](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/texas/east-texas/)

[Texas Panhandle](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/texas-panhandle/)

[Upton County](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/texas/upton-county/)

[Reagan County](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/texas/reagan-county/)

[Andrews County](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/texas/andrews-county/)

[Gaines County](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/texas/gaines-county/)

[Ector County](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/texas/ector-county/)

[Winkler County](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/texas/winkler-county/)

[Pecos County](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/texas/pecos-county/)

[Glasscock County](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/texas/glasscock-county/)

[Crane County](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/texas/crane-county/)

[Culberson County](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/texas/culberson-county/)

[Tarrant County](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/texas/tarrant-county/)

[Wise County](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/texas/wise-county/)

[Denton County](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/texas/denton-county/)

[Jack County](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/texas/jack-county/)

[Johnson County](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/texas/johnson-county/)

[Parker County](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/texas/parker-county/)

[Hood County](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/texas/hood-county/)

[Montague County](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/texas/montague-county/)

[San Augustine County](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/texas/san-augustine-county/)

[Nacogdoches County](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/texas/nacogdoches-county/)

[Shelby County](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/texas/shelby-county/)

[Sabine County](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/texas/sabine-county/)

[Robertson County](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/texas/robertson-county/)

[Leon County](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/texas/leon-county/)

[Freestone County](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/texas/freestone-county/)

[Madison County](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/texas/madison-county/)

[Brazos County](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/texas/brazos-county/)

Every Texas basin has its own page with the counties and formations we track.

### The Texas mineral owner's guide

Everything a Texas 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 Texas guide](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/guide/texas/)

[Every oil and gas operator in Texas](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/operators/texas/), with contact information, refreshed from the state regulator. Free to search, and useful whether or not you ever sell anything.

Questions

## Straight answers for Texas owners

My Texas royalty deed says free of cost. Does that stop deductions?
As of April 2026, generally no, and this is the most important recent development in Texas royalty law. In Fasken Oil and Ranch, Ltd. v. Puig, No. 24-1033, decided April 10, 2026, the Texas Supreme Court held that free of cost forever language in a 1960 royalty reservation does not bar the deduction of post production costs. The Court read the phrase as referring only to exploration and production costs, not to downstream costs of processing and transporting, and held that the words produced from the above described acreage established a valuation point at the wellhead. It distinguished Chesapeake v. Hyder on the ground that Hyder contained an express parenthetical exception showing intent to deviate. The practical instruction for a Texas owner is that cost free boilerplate alone no longer does the job: to get a genuinely cost free royalty you must change the valuation point to the point of sale, specify that costs are added back to the royalty base, or use price actually received language.

My old deed says one half of one eighth. What do I actually own?
Possibly one half, not one sixteenth. In Van Dyke v. The Navigator Group, 668 S.W.3d 353 (Tex. 2023), the Texas Supreme Court held that when a double fraction involving one eighth appears in an antiquated mineral instrument, courts begin with a rebuttable presumption that the one eighth refers to the entire mineral estate rather than to one eighth of it, because of the historic estate misconception. So one half of one eighth reserved one half. That presumption can be rebutted. In Clifton v. Johnson, decided March 13, 2026, the Court held it was rebutted where the deed expressly multiplied the fractions to a single product, such as 1/128 described as 1/16 of the usual 1/8 royalty. If your family deed contains a double fraction, it is worth having read, because the difference between one half and one sixteenth is eightfold.

Can I be forced into a unit in Texas the way owners are in Oklahoma?
Almost never, and this is the most owner favorable structural feature of Texas mineral law. The Mineral Interest Pooling Act, Tex. Nat. Res. Code chapter 102, is the only compulsory pooling mechanism and it was deliberately built to be hard to use. It applies only to reservoirs discovered and produced after March 8, 1961. Section 102.013 requires the Railroad Commission to dismiss an application if a fair and reasonable offer to pool voluntarily was not made first, which is where most applications die. The Commission cannot act on its own motion. Practically, a Texas operator that cannot get you to lease must lease around you, drill so as not to drain you, or leave you unleased. There is no twenty day election clock running against you as there is in Oklahoma. You keep your leverage.

Can I lose Texas mineral rights I have never used?
No. Texas has no dormant mineral act, no mineral lapse statute, and no marketable title act that extinguishes severed minerals. A Texas severed mineral interest does not revert to the surface owner for nonuse however long it sits idle, which puts Texas with Montana and Wyoming and against Kansas, North Dakota and Ohio. Two honest caveats: minerals can still be lost through adverse possession, which is difficult against a severed mineral estate because it generally requires actual production rather than surface use, and through tax foreclosure where minerals are separately assessed. Suspended royalty proceeds can also escheat to the Comptroller after the dormancy period, though the underlying interest does not.

What does Texas take in severance tax, and will I owe Texas tax when I sell?
Oil is taxed at 4.6 percent of market value or 4.6 cents per barrel, whichever is greater, under Tax Code chapter 202. Natural gas is 7.5 percent of market value under chapter 201. Condensate is 4.6 percent. There are meaningful incentives, including a high cost gas reduced rate, a two year inactive well exemption, marginal well relief, and a new exemption created by HB 3159 in 2025 for restimulated wells, giving up to 36 months of relief on qualifying wells effective for production from January 1, 2026. On a sale, Texas has no state individual income tax, so there is no Texas tax on your capital gain and nothing is withheld at closing. Along with Wyoming, Texas is the cleanest state in the country for an out of state mineral seller.

How is selling in Texas different from Oklahoma?
Three ways that matter. Legal descriptions run on abstracts and surveys rather than section, township and range, which makes self research harder and title work different. There is effectively no forced pooling, so your lease pooling clause governs and an unleased owner generally cannot be compelled in but also generally gets nothing. And Texas has no state income tax. We work both systems and prepare Texas standard deeds for Texas closings.

## Before you sign anything in Texas

The things owners here most often wish they had read first. All free, none of it gated.

- [How mineral rights are valued](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/mineral-rights-value/), including the rule of thumb people quote and why it is usually wrong

- [Selling mineral rights](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/sell-mineral-rights/) and [selling oil and gas royalties](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/sell-oil-and-gas-royalties/), with the real process and timeline

- [The Pugh clause](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/pugh-clause/), the single most valuable sentence you can negotiate into a lease

- [What a farm out is](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/farmout-agreements/), and why your operator suddenly changed

- [The rule of capture](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/rule-of-capture/), and why a neighbor's well can legally drain your minerals

- [Non-participating royalty interests](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/non-participating-royalty-interest/), if your deed carved one out

- [Executive rights](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/executive-rights/), if somebody else signs the lease that binds your minerals

- [Surface owner rights](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/surface-owner-rights/), if you own the ground and someone else owns what is under it

- [Questions to ask a buyer](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/questions-to-ask/) and [what happens if you want out after signing](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/can-i-back-out-of-a-mineral-rights-sale/)

Free Valuation

## Find out what your Texas minerals are worth.

Free, no obligation, and no pressure. We reply within one business day, usually faster.

Prefer the phone? Call or text [918-984-1645](tel:9189841645) and you will get Stephen, the owner, not a call center. If we miss you, we text back the same day.

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