The Texas Supreme Court has settled the issue of who owns the voids, known as salt caverns, created in subsurface salt formations (whether naturally occurring or caused as a result of salt mining operations). In Myers-Woodward, LLC v. Undergrounds Services Markham, LLC, the court affirmed the appellate court decision (previously reported on by Bracewell in a client alert on February 24, 2023), holding that surface owners, rather than mineral owners, own subsurface salt caverns. (— S.W.3d —, No. 22-0878, 2025 WL 1415892, at *1 (Tex. May 16, 2025)). This is true even when the mineral owner's activities create such caverns, as was the case in Myers-Woodward.
Rather than following the outlier, Mapco, the Texas Supreme Court decided to continue defining the scope of subsurface ownership outlined in decades of Texas case law. 808 S.W.2d 262, 264 (Tex. App.—Beaumont 1991, rev'd on other grounds, 817 S.W.2d 686 (Tex. 1991)). See e.g., Humble Oil & Ref. Co. v. West, 508 S.W.2d 812, 815 (Tex. 1974) (characterizing the surface owner's interest as ownership of the "reservoir storage space"); Regency Field Servs., LLC v. Swift Energy Operating, LLC, 622 S.W.3d 807, 820 (Tex. 2021) ("[T]he surface owner, and not the mineral lessee, owns the possessory rights to the space under the property's surface."). The court stated:
"Absent an agreement otherwise, ownership of underground salt does not include ownership of underground empty space within or around a salt formation. Nor does it include a right to use that empty space for purposes unrelated to the production of the property's minerals." Myers-Woodward, 2025 WL 1415892 at *1.
Salt caverns have become progressively more useful in oil and gas storage, making the rights to own and use them especially valuable. Mineral owners will need to explicitly contract for the right to utilize these vacant caverns to capitalize on their increasing hydrocarbon storage potential. Otherwise, these rights belong to the surface owners.
With this ruling, the Texas Supreme Court has ended the storage wars, for now.
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