The dominance of the severed mineral estate has been long been considered an axiomatic principal of oil and gas law. Within this paradigm, the split-estate mineral owner enjoys broad rights to use the surface estate as is reasonable and necessarily incident to mineral development. Dominance, accordingly, can be understood as exit: the right of the mineral owner to develop its subsurface property without association or coercion from others. However, this formalist view has eroded in the face of shifting social norms regarding environmental protection, the interests of privacy and enjoyment of surface owners, the recognition of new property interests in the subsurface, and changing sociological views regarding the value and utility of fossil energy production. While surface land has become increasingly fragmented and more valuable, advances in horizontal drilling technology have permitted erosion of the doctrine of mineral estate dominance. A realist view of the ordering between surface and mineral estates today indicates that the estates are increasingly enmeshed and indivisible within coupled human and natural systems. As a result, a binary and boundary-based adjudication of the concomitant rights of surface and mineral owners discourage cooperation and result in utilitarian concerns, environmental harms, and inefficient resource use. This article examines the convergence of surface and mineral estates within the framework of mismatched property interests and common resource problems. It challenges the binary dominantservient ordering of surface and mineral property. It suggests that resource-scale management facilitates incorporation of liberal commons principals into governance of the vertical commons in a manner that supports more robust environmental regulation and economically and socially productive use of shared resources.

中文翻译：

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解放分裂庄园

长期以来，被切断的矿产地的主导地位一直被认为是石油和天然气法的公理原则。在这种范式中，分权矿产所有者享有广泛使用地表资产的权利，这是合理且必然伴随矿产开发的。因此，支配地位可以理解为退出：矿产所有者在不受他人联合或胁迫的情况下开发其地下资产的权利。然而，随着关于环境保护的社会规范、地表所有者的隐私和享受利益、对地下新财产利益的承认以及关于化石能源价值和效用的社会学观点的变化，这种形式主义观点已经受到侵蚀。生产。虽然地表土地变得越来越分散和越来越有价值，水平钻探技术的进步使矿产地支配地位的学说受到侵蚀。今天，对地表和矿产之间排序的现实主义观点表明，这些庄园在耦合的人类和自然系统中越来越紧密和不可分割。因此，对地表和矿产所有者的伴随权利的二元和基于边界的裁决会阻碍合作，并导致功利问题、环境危害和资源利用效率低下。本文在不匹配的财产利益和共同资源问题的框架内研究了地表和矿产地的融合。它挑战了表面和矿物性质的二元主导服务排序。