The Louisiana Mineral Code, found in Title 31 of the Louisiana Revised Statutes, is the state’s civil-law framework for creating, transferring, and using mineral rights. Enacted in 1974, it separates mineral rights from surface ownership, sets rules for when unused rights expire, and governs leases, royalties, and the relationship between landowners and developers.1Justia Law. Louisiana Revised Statutes Title 31 – Mineral Code Louisiana is the only U.S. state whose mineral law is built on a civil-law tradition rather than common law, which is why its rules read differently from those of neighboring producing states.
What the Code Covers and How It Fits With Other Louisiana Law
Title 31 runs thirteen chapters covering landowner mineral rights, mineral servitudes, mineral royalties, executive rights, mineral leases, co-ownership, and secured interests in mineral rights, among other topics. Because it is statutory rather than judge-made, the code spells out detailed rules that in other states would live in case law.
The Mineral Code does not stand alone. Title 30 handles conservation and regulation of oil and gas operations, including drilling permits and compulsory unitization, and the Louisiana Environmental Quality Act (also in Title 30) governs environmental compliance. If you own mineral rights, hold a servitude, or negotiate a lease in Louisiana, all three bodies of law can touch your interest.
Mineral Servitudes and the Ten-Year Clock
A mineral servitude is the right to enter someone else’s land to explore for, produce, and take ownership of minerals. The servitude holder may use as much of the surface as is reasonably necessary and has the same protection against trespass a landowner would.2Justia Law. Louisiana Revised Statutes Title 31 RS 31-21 The holder has no duty to actually exercise the servitude, but anyone who does must follow the terms of the creating instrument or, in the absence of those terms, act consistently with the servitude’s purposes.
The rule that shapes almost every servitude decision in Louisiana is prescription of nonuse. A mineral servitude is extinguished by ten years of nonuse.3Justia Law. Louisiana Revised Statutes Title 31 RS 31-27 After a decade of inactivity, the rights revert to the landowner automatically. No lawsuit, no notice, no demand.
The clock can be reset. Good-faith drilling operations, actual production of minerals, and a tested shut-in well capable of producing in paying quantities all interrupt prescription. Unit operations on land pooled with the burdened tract count as well. If you hold a servitude, treat the ten-year window as always running. If you sold or reserved mineral rights years ago and nothing has happened, check whether any qualifying activity ever occurred. Idle servitudes eventually go back to the landowner.
Mineral Royalty Interests
A mineral royalty is the right to share in the production of minerals from land owned by someone else, or from land subject to another person’s mineral servitude. Unless the parties agree otherwise, the royalty holder shares in gross production free of drilling and operating expenses. A royalty interest does not include the right to lease the land or drill it.
Royalties are also subject to ten-year prescription of nonuse, but the reset rules are narrower than for servitudes. Signing a lease or beginning drilling does not interrupt prescription for a royalty. Only actual production in paying quantities, or a tested shut-in well capable of such production, restarts the clock. That difference catches people out. A servitude holder can preserve rights by drilling; a royalty holder watching the same well only benefits once the well actually produces.
Mineral Leases
A mineral lease is a contract giving the lessee the right to explore for and produce minerals.4Justia Law. Louisiana Revised Statutes Title 31 RS 31-114 One lease can cover multiple noncontiguous tracts, and operations or production on any burdened tract (or on land unitized with it) can maintain the whole lease according to its terms.
Primary Term
Leases are not subject to the ten-year prescription of nonuse that governs servitudes and royalties. Louisiana public policy does, however, cap the primary term of a mineral lease at ten years without drilling or production. A lease that recites a longer term is not void; the term is reduced to ten years. If the primary term ends without the drilling or production the habendum clause requires, the lease terminates automatically, with no notice needed.
The Prudent-Operator Standard
A mineral lessee is not a fiduciary, but must perform the contract in good faith and develop the property as a reasonably prudent operator for the mutual benefit of both parties.5Louisiana State Legislature. Louisiana Revised Statutes RS 31-122 The parties can define what counts as prudent conduct in the lease itself. Without those definitions, courts ask what a reasonable operator would do under the same circumstances.
Payments and the Notice Requirement for Late Royalties
Leases commonly include royalty payments (the lessor’s share of production), a bonus paid at signing, and delay rentals paid during the primary term if drilling hasn’t begun. If a lessee fails to pay royalties on time, the code requires the lessor to send written notice before filing suit. The lessee then has a chance to cure the default. A royalty suit filed without that notice can be dismissed.
Minimum Royalty Rates on State Land
For leases on state-owned lands and water bottoms, oil and gas leases must pay at least one-eighth (12.5%) of production, and leases executed on behalf of school boards must pay at least one-sixth.6Justia Law. Louisiana Revised Statutes Title 30 RS 30-127 Private leases are not bound by these minimums, though the one-eighth figure is the customary floor in private negotiations, and landowners in active areas often negotiate 20% or 25%.
Surface Owner and Mineral Owner Obligations
When mineral rights and surface rights belong to different people, the code requires both to exercise their rights with reasonable regard for the other.7Justia Law. Louisiana Revised Statutes Title 31 RS 31-11 The mineral owner can use only as much of the surface as is reasonably necessary for operations. Where multiple parties hold separate mineral rights in the same tract, they owe each other the same duty.
When mineral rights are reserved in a land sale, the instrument should address surface use. If the parties don’t include specific terms, the code supplies default language recognizing the mineral owner’s right to use the surface for exploration, mining, and production, subject to the reasonable-regard standard. In practice, reasonable regard is fact-intensive: a surface owner cannot block legitimate operations, but a mineral developer cannot bulldoze a homestead for a well pad either. Surface-use disputes are among the most common fights in Louisiana mineral practice.
Pooling and Unitization
Oil and gas reservoirs cross property lines. Unitization and pooling combine tracts into a single drilling unit so a reservoir can be developed with fewer wells, and production is then allocated among interest holders proportionally.
Voluntary pooling agreements are governed by the Mineral Code, and its lease provisions recognize that operations on unitized land maintain the lease across the entire burdened area. When landowners cannot agree, the Commissioner of Conservation has authority under Title 30 to order compulsory unitization after a public hearing.
Unitization matters for prescription. Production from a unit that includes the burdened land interrupts the ten-year prescription of nonuse as to all of the burdened land, not just the portion inside the unit.
Drilling Permits and Environmental Oversight
No well is drilled in Louisiana without a permit from the Commissioner of Conservation.8Justia Law. Louisiana Revised Statutes Title 30 RS 30-28 Once the Commissioner issues a permit, no other state agency or local government can prohibit or interfere with drilling under it. If a residential or commercial structure sits within 500 feet of a proposed site, the Commissioner must notify the property owners and hold a public hearing.
Environmental compliance is separate. The Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality administers the Louisiana Environmental Quality Act, covering air, water, solid and hazardous waste, and radiation.9Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality. Louisiana Revised Statutes Title 30 Subtitle II – Environmental Quality Operators who emit air contaminants, discharge pollutants into state waters, or generate hazardous waste need LDEQ permits. State administrative rules require drilling and production sites to use the best practical techniques to prevent pollutant releases and to restore sites as close to their original condition as practicable when operations end.10Legal Information Institute. Louisiana Administrative Code Title 43 Section I-719 Mineral operators in Louisiana answer to two regulators: the Office of Conservation on where and how to drill, LDEQ on the environmental footprint.
Taxes on Production and Royalty Income
Louisiana imposes severance taxes on minerals extracted from the soil or water, calculated on quantity or value.11Justia Law. Louisiana Code 47-633 – Severance Tax Rates Administration For oil, wells completed before July 1, 2025 are taxed at 12.5% of value at the time and place of severance. Wells completed after that date pay 6.5% for full-rate oil and condensate, with reduced rates for tertiary recovery (3.25%) and horizontal wells (1.3%).12Louisiana Department of Revenue. Oil Severance Tax Natural gas is taxed per thousand cubic feet, with the full rate at $0.1052 per MCF for July 2025 through June 2026 and reduced rates for inactive, orphan, incapable, and horizontal wells.13Louisiana Department of Revenue. What Is the Severance Tax Rate for Natural Gas Separate per-ton rates apply to sulphur, salt, sand, stone, marble, shells, and lignite.14Louisiana Department of Revenue. Minerals
On the federal side, mineral royalties are ordinary income and are reported on Form 1099-MISC when payments reach $10 or more for the year. Independent producers and royalty owners can claim percentage depletion of 15% for oil and gas, and up to 25% for marginal production when crude prices are low.15Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 613A – Limitations on Percentage Depletion in Case of Oil and Gas Percentage depletion is calculated against gross income from the property rather than cost basis, and can eventually exceed what the owner paid for the interest.
Where Mineral Disputes Come From
Most Louisiana mineral fights fall into a handful of categories: prescription disputes over whether a servitude or royalty has expired, lease interpretation questions (especially around the habendum clause), royalty underpayment, surface damage claims, and boundary conflicts over which tract a well is actually draining.
Prescription disputes are the highest-stakes because the question is all or nothing. Either the mineral servitude or royalty still exists, or it has been extinguished. Courts examine the full ten-year window for any qualifying interruption, and a single well test or short period of production can save an interest worth millions. If you hold, sold, or bought Louisiana mineral rights, that decade is the number to keep in front of you.