Updated August 7, 2026. Quick answer: inherited minerals are real property with a paper trail, and the order of operations matters. 🔴 Establish title first, understand the lease second, and treat any purchase offer arriving in the first months as information about the asset rather than an opportunity.
The order that avoids the expensive mistakes
- Confirm how title actually passed. Minerals often move through probate separately from the surface, and in a different county or state from where the decedent lived.
- Get the lease, not just the cheque. The royalty fraction, the term, and any pooling or shut-in provisions are in the lease — not in the division order.
- Read the division order for what it is. It cannot change your lease.
- Establish your basis before you consider selling. Basis and depletion decide what a sale actually nets.
The state takes a cut of production, before anything else
Producing states levy a severance tax on the value of what is extracted, and it comes off before you see it. Two states’ own published rates:
| State | Rate |
|---|---|
| Texas | Oil 4.6% · gas 7.5% · enhanced oil recovery 2.3% |
| North Dakota | 5% gross production plus 5% extraction (a 2% reduced rate applies to certain formations; a 6% price-trigger provision exists) |
⚠️ Honest gap: we tried to verify Oklahoma and could not. Every official route we attempted failed for technical reasons. We are not printing an Oklahoma rate from a secondary source — ask the Oklahoma Tax Commission directly.
If an offer arrives early
🔴 Unsolicited offers frequently arrive before the heir knows the decimal, the lease terms, or the basis. That is not an accusation about any particular buyer — it is a structural fact about who has the information. How offers are priced is the page to read before responding to one.
Where the rest of an estate is involved: buying out siblings and selling an inherited home. The other asset class with its own transfer rules rather than the estate’s: inherited firearms, state by state.
Sources
Severance rates: Texas Comptroller and the North Dakota Office of State Tax Commissioner, each from its own published guidance. All read 7 August 2026. General information, not tax or legal advice. Mineral and property-tax law is state law; confirm anything decision-critical locally.