Mineral Rights Boundary Disputes

The land in beautiful Colorado often contains valuable minerals under the surface. One issue that often arises is how to determine ownership of the minerals under the land. These problems arise typically when there is some value to those minerals (including oil and gas) and the person producing value from the minerals needs to know who to pay.

Recently, the Colorado Court of Appeals addressed an issue for the first time in Colorado that impacts mineral rights and landowners everywhere. The case was Great Northern v. Extraction Oil & Gas, case number 21CA0700 (COA 2022).

Under default “common law” rules, under certain circumstances when someone sells all of their land directly adjacent to a road (a/k/a a right-of-way) the “centerline presumption” will apply. The centerline presumption is essentially a rule that means courts will interpret a deed as giving all of the seller’s rights to the buyer as if the seller had sold the rights all the way to the centerline of the road.

Does this include the rights to the mineral estate under the road when the centerline presumption applies? According to the Colorado Court of Appeals, the centerline presumption includes a rule conveying the mineral rights to the center of the right-of-way. This means that if you want to keep ownership of the mineral rights which are physically under a right-of-way you must explicitly and specifically reserve the mineral rights from any deed selling (“conveying”) your property away.

Keep in mind, that there are a number of preconditions that have to be met before the centerline presumption will kick in. If you have a boundary dispute or a mineral rights issue, the centerline presumption could impact your legal rights. Contact Newland Legal today at (303) 938-1489 or by email to zach@newlandlegal.com if you need a real estate attorney in Jefferson County, Clear Creek County, Summit County, or Park County Colorado.