If you own oil and gas minerals, you already know the drill: you own what’s under your land, someone leases it, and you get a royalty check. Did you know there is an entirely separate side to mineral rights on federal lands and that has to do with mining claims. In this episode, we sit down with attorney and Utah landman Justin Rammell of Rammell Law, PLLC, to break down how mining claims actually work, why a “valid claim” doesn’t mean someone can start digging tomorrow, and all that you need to know about lithium rights.
This information is for educational purposes only and should not be construed as legal, financial, or investment advice.
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About Justin Rammell
Justin Rammell is an attorney and native Utah landman with Rammell Law, PLLC, where he focuses on oil, gas, mining, geothermal, mineral title, and related estate-planning matters. He has prepared mineral title opinions across the Rocky Mountain region and advises clients on leases, surface-use agreements, title research, and curative issues. His practical experience helps mineral and royalty owners understand how ownership, land status, and development rights intersect.
Mining Claims vs. Oil and Gas Rights: What Mineral Owners Need to Know
A mining claim is not an oil and gas lease, and treating it like one is where a lot of confusion starts. Justin Rammell joined us to walk through a system (mining claims) that runs on completely different rules than the oil and gas leasing that most of us are familiar with.
What is a Mining Claim?
A mining claim gives someone the right to explore for and develop a valuable mineral deposit — it’s not ownership of the land, and it’s not a lease in the oil and gas sense. Claims are usually tied to federal land that’s open to mineral entry. The key distinction Justin draws is between patented and unpatented claims. A patented claim means the claimant actually owns the surface and the minerals outright. An unpatented claim is different — it’s closer to a right to possess the ground as long as you keep working it, built around the legal concept of “pedis possessio.” The goal with an unpatented claim is to make a discovery of a valuable mineral and file that with the BLM. And here’s something that surprised me: pulling gold or other locatable minerals off federal land under a valid claim is royalty-free. There’s no government cut. What claim holders do pay is an annual maintenance fee, historically due September 1, to keep the claim active and keep others out.
One historical wrinkle worth knowing: in 1987, funding for the BLM to actually process new claims into patents was cut off. That’s changed how claims function in practice today, even though patenting is still technically part of the law.
The class of mineral determines the rules that apply
Not every mineral is treated the same way under federal law, and which bucket a mineral falls into determines the entire legal path you have to follow.
- Locatable minerals — gold, silver, copper, uranium, and most hardrock minerals — go through the mining claim system we just described.
- Leasable minerals — oil, gas, coal, phosphate, sodium, and potassium — go through a leasing system that looks much more like what oil and gas owners already know.
- Saleable minerals — sand, gravel, stone, and other common materials — follow yet another set of rules entirely. Two minerals can sit under the exact same acre of ground and follow completely different legal processes depending on which bucket they’re in.
How a claim actually gets created
It’s a multi-step process, not a flag in the ground. A claimant has to confirm the land is open to mineral entry, physically locate the deposit, mark or monument the claim on the ground, record it with the county, and file it with the BLM — generally within 90 days. From there, annual maintenance fees keep the claim alive, unless the claimant qualifies for a waiver. There are also different types of claims — lode claims and placer claims — along with mill sites and tunnel sites that serve different purposes in a mining operation.
Land status changes everything
Where the deposit sits changes the entire rulebook. BLM land, National Forest land, state or private land, tribal land, and withdrawn or restricted land all carry different rights and different processes — even for the exact same mineral deposit. Split estates add another layer, and patented versus unpatented status changes things again. This is also where mining claims and oil and gas leases can end up overlapping on the same acreage, and when that happens, neither side automatically wins. If you want a deeper dive into how ownership rights stack and interact more broadly, that’s exactly the ground we covered in MRP 338 on the bundle of sticks.
A claim is not permission to start mining
This is one of the biggest misconceptions Justin sees. Between staking a claim and actually breaking ground, there’s a real regulatory process: casual use rules, notice-level exploration requirements, a formal plan of operations, environmental review, bonding, reclamation planning, water use permitting, and confirming legal road access. Add in wildlife, cultural-resource, and seasonal restrictions, and you can end up with a perfectly valid claim that’s economically stranded simply because the access or surface restrictions make development impractical. A visible road doesn’t necessarily mean there’s legal access to use it.
Where lithium breaks the old assumptions
We’ve covered lithium demand, extraction technology, and project economics on this show before. This episode tackles the harder question: who actually owns it, and which legal system governs it. Lithium shows up in hardrock deposits, in underground brines, and dissolved in produced water from oil and gas wells — and each of those can trigger a different ownership framework. This is where the mineral estate and the surface estate can genuinely diverge, and where owning the water is a legally different question from owning what’s dissolved in it. Did you know that under federal law, lithium is currently treated as a locatable mineral? This means a company generally has to stake a claim over the area — not simply lease it the way they would oil and gas. Whether an oil and gas lease automatically includes the rights to lithium in produced water is far from settled, and the answer can depend heavily on the specific language in your deed or lease — phrases like “oil, gas, and other minerals” carry real weight here. Oklahoma’s iodine-brine development history is a useful real-world example of how these ownership questions have played out before with a different dissolved mineral. Geothermal projects add one more wrinkle: geothermal rights are handled differently state by state, royalty payments there are typically a small percentage of electricity revenue rather than a production royalty, and open-loop geothermal systems can end up extracting minerals like lithium as a byproduct.
Mining royalties don’t work like oil and gas royalties
This might be the biggest practical takeaway for anyone approached about a mining or lithium lease. Mining royalties are frequently structured as a net smelter return royalty, which is a completely different animal than a gross oil and gas royalty. A net smelter return royalty gets reduced by smelting and refining charges, transportation costs, processing and marketing expenses, and quality or penalty adjustments — meaning a 2% or 3% mining royalty is not directly comparable to a 2% or 3% oil and gas royalty. You’ll also want to understand how concentrates, stockpiles, and byproducts are treated, whether there are minimum or advance royalty payments, what work commitments apply, and — critically — what audit rights you have to verify the numbers.
What to check before signing anything
Before signing a mining or lithium lease, confirm your actual mineral ownership, confirm the claim’s validity and the land’s status, and pin down exactly which minerals are covered. Verify the acreage, maps, and legal descriptions, and make sure the royalty definition and permitted deductions are spelled out clearly. Push for minimum royalties and defined work requirements, address water use and access explicitly, and don’t skip reclamation and bonding provisions. Protect your audit rights, review the assignment and change-of-control language, and understand who’s responsible for indemnity and environmental liability if something goes wrong.
How to confirm what you own
If you think a mining claim might touch your minerals, start by confirming the land status and identifying which mineral bucket you’re dealing with. For mining claims and oil and gas leases on Federal Lands, search the BLM’s MLRS database along with state and county records, and check the claim type, serial number, location date, and maintenance status. Look for any withdrawals or special land designations, identify who controls the surface, and confirm there’s actual legal access to the site.
To find out what minerals were included in the original conveyance from the United States Government when the land was patented, search the BLM General Land Office (GLO) database to download a copy of the patent for your minerals.
The bottom line
“Who owns the minerals?” is only the first question you need to ask. You also have to ask what mineral is actually involved, what land status applies, who controls the surface, what access and permits are required, and what agreement actually governs the royalty. Miss any one of those, and you can end up with a claim, a lease, or an expectation that doesn’t match the reality on the ground.
How to Contact Justin
Resources Mentioned in This Episode
- MRP 208: The Rise of Lithium: Implications for Mineral Rights Owners
- MRP 316: Fad or Fortune? The Truth About Lithium Extraction Economics for Royalty Owners
- MRP 338: The Bundle of Sticks: Do You Know Which Rights You Actually Own?
- BLM Mineral & Land Records System
- BLM General Land Office Patent Search
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