Mineral Rights Overview
The owner of mineral rights is a co-owner of the property and owns (a) the right to access the property at any time without notice; (b) the right to remove surface improvements; (c) the right to test, explore, mine, process, and remove the listed minerals found on the surface and underground; and (d) the right to finance, mortgage, encumber, lease, transfer, subdivide, and sell all or any part of the mineral rights in the parcel.
The owner of mineral rights owns a share of the real-estate and owns the minerals themselves. In the case of Saddle Mountain Minerals, LLC the surface owner's deed will have the following exceptions and reservations that specifies what property rights the surface owner does not own including, but not limited to:
"EXCEPTING AND RESERVING, however, to the Grantor, for itself, its successors and assigns, forever, all right, title and interest, legal and equitable, whatsoever, however derived, reserved or held, in and to all geothermal heat and all ores and minerals of any nature whatsoever, including, but not limited to, oil, gas, other hydrocarbons, carbon dioxide, coal, iron, gas occurring in coal formation, industrial minerals and metallic minerals, aggregates, sand, gravel, clay, uranium, rock, including, but not limited to, rock of a unique character ( hereinafter collectively referred to as “Minerals”), in and under or which may be produced from the Property, together with all rights to enter upon the Property for the purpose of prospecting and exploring for Minerals by geophysical, geochemical or other means, and for the purposes of drilling, extracting, operating and working any extraction and processing facilities by any procedures whatsoever, and taking out, removing, carrying away, the tenements, hereditaments and appurtenances. Provided, however, that the Grantee, his successors and assigns, shall be paid just and reasonable compensation for any actual physical injury or damage to the surface of said Property and to growing crops and timber thereon caused by the exercise of any rights herein reserved. The exercise of such rights by the Grantor or its successors and assigns shall not be postponed or delayed pending reasonable efforts to agree upon, or have determined, such just and reasonable compensation."
The Saddle Mountain Minerals, LLC mineral rights are a protected "legal interest" and ownership that has been repeatedly affirmed by the Washington courts, including the Washington Supreme Court in Saddle Mountain Minerals v. Joshi, 152 Wn.2d 242 (2004) and the Washington Court of Appeals in Saddle Mountain Minerals v. Santiago Homes, 146 Wn.App. 69 (Div 3., 2008). Documents of both cases are provided below.