The question. Can one tract have more than one holder, and how would I tell from the records?
The layers in plain words
This guide uses three plain terms. The surface estate is the land itself and its surface. The mineral estate is the interest in the minerals below. A severance is a split, as when a deed sells the surface and keeps the minerals, or the reverse. Chapter 141 and the instruments in a tract's records use their own words.
A lease, wells, roads and easements can add more layers. Plate 1 draws five layers for one made-up tract, and they do not line up. The rights stack worksheet lays them out for a tract of your own.
How a depth split reads
In this guide, a depth severance is a division of minerals by depth. In a made-up example, a deed reserves the oil and gas minerals only from the surface down to a stated depth, a lease covers only that shallower part, and the deed says nothing about the ground below. Whether such wording reaches a deeper interval, or reaches geothermal energy, is a reading of the words in the instruments themselves. This guide does not make that reading for any real tract.
What Texas chapter 141 says
Chapter 141 of the Texas Natural Resources Code is titled Geothermal Resources. The table gives what each piece says, and does not say who owns what on any tract.
| Section | What the text says |
|---|---|
| Natural Resources Code (NRC) 141.003(4) | "Geothermal energy and associated resources" means products of geothermal processes, embracing indigenous steam, hot water and hot brines, and geopressured water; steam and other gasses, hot water and hot brines resulting from fluids artificially introduced into geothermal formations; heat or other associated energy found in geothermal formations; and any by-product derived from them. |
| NRC 141.003(5) | A "by-product" is any other element found in a geothermal formation which is brought to the surface, whether or not it is used in geothermal heat or pressure inducing energy generation. It excludes a "mineral" as defined by Property Code section 75.001 and oil, gas or a product of oil or gas as defined by Natural Resources Code section 85.001. |
| Property Code 75.001(a)(1) | In Property Code chapter 75, "mineral" means oil, gas, uranium, sulphur, lignite, coal, and any other substance ordinarily and naturally considered a mineral in the state, regardless of depth. |
| NRC 85.001(b) | In chapter 85, "oil" means crude petroleum oil, crude petroleum and crude oil, and "gas" means natural gas. The text adds that these terms mean the same in other laws relating to the conservation of oil and gas. |
| NRC 141.004(a) | Unless a conveyance, contract, deed, reservation, exception, limitation, lease or other binding obligation expressly provides otherwise, geothermal energy and associated resources below the surface are owned as real property by the landowner, or by the owner of the surface estate if the surface and mineral estates have been severed. Section 141.004 was added in 2023, effective June 18, 2023. |
| NRC 141.004(b) | Those ownership rights entitle the owner, and the owner's lessee, heir or assignee, to drill for and produce the resources, subject to chapter 141. |
| NRC 141.004(c) | Section 141.004 does not apply to minerals dissolved or otherwise contained in groundwater, including in hot brines. It does not change existing law on oil, gas or mineral extraction regardless of its heat or energy potential, the rights of the dominant and servient estates (terms explained under the court opinions below), or the ownership and use of groundwater. |
| NRC 141.002(4) and (5) | The declaration of policy says that, since geopressured geothermal resources in Texas are an energy resource system, all of the resource system components, as defined in the chapter, shall be treated and produced as mineral resources. It adds that in making that declaration there is no intent to change the substantive law of Texas. |
The text does not say whether gas dissolved in geopressured water is "natural gas" under a given lease or deed. It does not say how an older severance deed is to be read. The policy statement and the ownership section sit in the same subchapter, and this guide does not reconcile them.
Source: Texas Natural Resources Code, Chapter 141; Texas Property Code, Chapter 75; Texas Natural Resources Code, Chapter 85, Texas Legislature. Read October 4, 2026.
What the Louisiana texts say
Louisiana uses different wording, in Title 30 of its Revised Statutes and in the Mineral Code in Title 31.
- Title 30 defines "geothermal resources" to include both hydropressured and geopressured reservoirs and waters, but excepts waters produced incidental to oil or gas exploration or production, and potable water produced from wells where the heat, pressure or dissolved natural gas is not extracted or used for energy purposes. The same definition reaches natural gas dissolved in formation water produced at a geothermal, hydropressured or geopressured well bore, and heat or other associated energy in those formations.
- It defines a geothermal "by-product" as a mineral, other than oil and natural gas, found in solution or in association with a geothermal resource and meeting any one of three alternative conditions the section lists, the first of which compares its value with the value of the whole resource. These definitions are written for that chapter.
- Mineral Code section 31:6 says two things. Ownership of land does not include ownership of oil, gas and other minerals occurring naturally in liquid or gaseous form, or of any elements or compounds in solution, emulsion or association with such minerals. The landowner has the exclusive right to explore and develop the property for the production of such minerals and to reduce them to possession and ownership. The text does not mention heat, brine or geothermal energy.
- Section 31:4 applies the Code to all forms of minerals, including oil and gas. It also applies the Code to rights to explore for or mine or remove from land the soil itself, gravel, shells, subterranean water including brine, or other substances occurring naturally in or as a part of the soil or geological formations on or underlying the land. It does not use the word geothermal.
This guide does not conclude who holds geothermal heat or brine on private land in Louisiana.
Source: La. R.S. 30:801; La. R.S. 31:6; La. R.S. 31:4, Louisiana State Legislature. Read October 4, 2026.
Two Texas Supreme Court opinions
Neither 2025 opinion is a geothermal case.
- Cactus Water Services, LLC v. COG Operating, LLC, No. 23-0676, opinion delivered June 27, 2025. The case concerns produced water, the water that comes up with oil and gas, under oil and gas conveyances. The court held that a deed or lease using typical language to convey oil-and-gas rights, though not expressly addressing produced water, includes that substance as part of the conveyance whether the parties knew of its prospective value or not. It added that a surface owner who wants to retain ownership of constituent water incidentally and necessarily produced with hydrocarbons must reserve it expressly. The court expressed no view on ownership of any nonhydrocarbon minerals included in the liquid-waste byproduct, and the case does not decide ownership of fluids produced for geothermal use.
- Myers-Woodward, LLC v. Underground Services Markham, LLC, No. 22-0878, opinion delivered May 16, 2025. The case concerns the empty salt caverns left by salt mining, in a dispute between a mineral owner and a surface owner over their use. Under the conveyances at issue, the court agreed that the holder of the surface estate owns the empty underground spaces left behind by the mineral owner's salt mining. It stated its holding as: absent an agreement otherwise, the surface owner and not the mineral lessee owns the possessory rights to the space under the property's surface. The court also restated, from an earlier opinion, that the severed mineral estate has the implied right to use as much of the surface as reasonably necessary to produce and remove minerals, and that the mineral estate is called "dominant" and the surface estate "servient" because the mineral estate receives the benefit of that implied right of use. The opinion does not say whether a geothermal owner is dominant or servient to a mineral owner.
Source: Cactus Water Services, LLC v. COG Operating, LLC and Myers-Woodward, LLC v. Underground Services Markham, LLC, Supreme Court of Texas. Read October 4, 2026.
Where each layer is read
Each layer in Plate 1 is read from a different record, as guide 1 lists for a made-up area.
Title insurance and these layers
Texas law lets a title insurance company, subject to its underwriting standards, except from coverage a mineral estate or the geothermal energy and associated resources below the surface, and says such an exception does not create coverage as to their condition or ownership.
Source: Texas Insurance Code, Chapter 2703, section 2703.056, Texas Legislature. Read October 4, 2026.