Hacker News Reader

"energy companies bought "mineral rights" to the land below those farms"

Presumably someone (the farmers?) sold those rights in the past?

In most places mineral rights and land rights are separate. I may own land but if diamonds are found under it by somebody else, I have no particular right to extract them. It appears the US may be different though.

But if I start of owning both the land and the mineral rights, surely I can sell off the mineral rights and continue to "own" and farm the land? It would seem a surpising legal requirement that the land and the mineral rights always remain part of the same item.

[NB I come from somewhere with quite remarkable land ownership issues, so perhaps I'm introducing complexities where they don't exist].

Usually. It depends on the deed titles you possess, which may preclude such actions. Also, sometimes they may not be severable based on jurisdiction.

Well, there are ways around it:

http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120427144332/simpson...

Isn't that a real thing though? I thought that slant drilling from Kuwait into a disputed region in Iraq was one of the claimed causes of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.

The gov't bodies largely determine the law, so they've determined that the farmer only bought the land above the mineral deposits. ;)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com