Mineral Reservations and Exceptions: Strohacker Doctrine

摘要

The defendant claims ownership in the natural gas by a 1936 reservation that excepted from "all of the minerals under the land . . . together with the right to enter upon said land . . . and . . . drill for and remove minerals." The plaintiff, owner of the fee, sues to quiet title. The district court holds that the 1936 reservation, as a matter of law, is effective to reserve natural gas. In so doing, the court applies the Strohacker doctrine, which determines the scope of the generic term "mineral" in reservations and conveyances in Arkansas. The test of Strohacker is whether the substance at issue (natural gas) was a mineral in legal and commercial usage in the locality as of the date of the deed. Held: affirmed. The judgment of the district court is affirmed without resort to the interesting and complex fact question as to whether the 1936 reservation of "minerals" encompasses natural gas under the contemporaneous legal and commercial usage standard of Strohacker. As a matter of law, a reservation of minerals in a 1936 deed includes natural gas. At that time, either exploration or production of natural gas occurred statewide, or legal and commercial usage accepted natural gas as a mineral statewide. Old deeds provide the difficult interpretation of the generic term "mineral" that requires the applicability of Strohacker.